n, seemed reduced to a torpid
quietness, the resignation of despair. They had left off trying
to better their condition, and taken refuge in a wise and patient
hopelessness, bent to endure in silence the extremity of ill. The six
insides, on the contrary, were still fighting against their fate,
vainly struggling to ameliorate their hapless destiny. They were visibly
grumbling at the weather, scolding at the dust, and heating themselves
like a furnace, by striving against the heat. How well I remember the
fat gentleman without his coat, who was wiping his forehead, heaving up
his wig, and certainly uttering that English ejaculation, which, to
our national reproach, is the phrase of our language best known on the
continent. And that poor boy, red-hot, all in a flame, whose mamma,
having divested her own person of all superfluous apparel, was trying to
relieve his sufferings by the removal of his neckerchief--an operation
which he resisted with all his might. How perfectly I remember him, as
well as the pale girl who sat opposite, fanning herself with her bonnet
into an absolute fever! They vanished after a while into their own dust;
but I have them all before my eyes at this moment, a companion picture
to Hogarth's 'Afternoon,' a standing lesson to the grumblers at cold
summers.

For my part, I really like this wet season. It keeps us within, to be
sure, rather more than is quite agreeable; but then we are at least
awake and alive there, and the world out of doors is so much the
pleasanter when we can get abroad. Everything does well, except those
fastidious bipeds, men and women; corn ripens, grass grows, fruit is
plentiful; there is no lack of birds to eat it, and there has not been
such a wasp-season these dozen years. My garden wants no watering, and
is more beautiful than ever, beating my old rival in that primitive art,
the pretty wife of the little mason, out and out. Measured with mine,
her flowers are naught. Look at those hollyhocks, like pyramids of
roses; those garlands of the convolvulus major of all colours, hanging
around that tall pole, like the wreathy hop-bine; those magnificent
dusky cloves, breathing of the Spice Islands; those flaunting double
dahlias; those splendid scarlet geraniums, and those fierce and warlike
flowers the tiger-lilies. Oh, how beautiful they are! Besides, the
weather clears sometimes--it has cleared this evening; and here are
we, after a merry walk up the hill, almost as quick as