“How beautiful is summer,” says the elegant author of Sylvan Sketches, a volume that may be regarded as a sequel to the Flora Domestica, from the hand of the same lady.—“How beautiful is summer! the trees are heavy with fruit and foliage; the sun is bright and cheering in the morning; the shade of broad and leafy boughs is refreshing at noon; and the calm breezes of the evening whisper gently through the leaves, which reflect the liquid light of the moon when she is seen—
———— “lifting her silver rim
Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim
Coming into the blue with all her light.”
On [page 337] of the present work, there is the [spring dress] of our ancestors in the fourteenth century, from an illumination in a manuscript copied by Strutt. From the same illumination, their summer dress in that age is [here] represented.
LONGEST DAY.
No day is disadvantageous to an agreeable thought or two upon “Time;” and the present, being the longest day, is selected for submitting to perusal a very pleasant little apologue from a miscellany addressed to the young. The object of the writer was evidently to do good, and it is hoped that its insertion here, in furtherance of the purpose, may not be less pleasing to the editor who first introduced it to the public eye, than it will be found by the readers of the Every-Day Book. This is the tale.
THE DISCONTENTED PENDULUM.
An old clock, that had stood for fifty years in a farmer’s kitchen, without giving its owner any cause of complaint, early one summer’s morning, before the family was stirring, suddenly stopped.
Upon this, the dial-plate (if we may credit the fable,) changed countenance with alarm; the hands made a vain effort to continue their course; the wheels remained motionless with surprise; the weights hung speechless; each member felt disposed to lay the blame on the others. At length the dial instituted a formal inquiry as to the cause of the stagnation, when hands, wheels, weights, with one voice protested their innocence. But now a faint tick was heard below from the pendulum, who thus spoke:—