The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-03
sPrRxT OF THE PRHss.
Editorisl Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current opios-CompiIed Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
THE FALSE GLoRIEs OF SUMMER.


temptation of doing it justice in plain prose.
All the poets. from the apocryphal time of
Scio's sightless bard to the days of Browning
and Lowell-not to speak of the host of tune
full rbymers who win neither fame nor for
tune-have made the Summer an ideal have
hung upon it their fairest festoons of fancy,
and their richest garlands of thought. By
some series of subtitle causes, the Summer
has come to represent whatever beauty
sweetness and richness there may be in life
mo less than the fruitage and fruition of the
fondeet wishes and highest aspirations. One
would imagine, from all tbis rhythmic ado and
miscellaneous mellihuence. that Summer was a
peculiar atmospheric condition of Parnassus to
which no mortal, even though drunk with
the wine of poesy, had ever been admitted.
And yet the season is literally scattered all
over the planet-too much 80 to enforce the
belief that it is a blessing. Go where we
will. unless to the peaks of the Alps or Hima-
layas we cannot get beyond the region where
the mercury insists on altitude, and where the
heat is oppressive at some time of the year. We
associate Russia with superabundant SHOWS:
and yet who that has been in Moscow or st.
Petersburg, duringlJuly or August, has not
found himself in melting mood Stockholm,
or Ohristiania, hyperborean as they seem, are
anything but comfortable in those months;
and Greenland itself is not incapable of pro-
ducing calorifc griefs. While the dog-star
ragged, we have often sought in vain for
sequestered spots wherein the Thermometer
might play an unconspicuous part. We are
profoundly skeptical if there be any such
places Oh the surface of the globe; and we
have always questioned if Sir John franklin
amid the Arctic icebergs, did not die of sun
stroke.
Of all the seasons, summer has the least to
recommend it; indeed, may be said to be the
most unendurable Spring, autumn, and
winter have their pleasures, their pleasant
nesses, and their poetry; but summer, by its
sultriness, its monotony, and its heat, makes
comfort mockery and satisfaction a sham.
1t is all we'll enough to read of solstitial Joys
and beauties but when we strive to realize
them, they elude and delude us like a will-o-
the-wisp. Sophomorical weeklies tell us OF
the glory Of the outrageous woods and the
sparkle of the silver streamlets We visit
them only to find, to our disappointment and
disgust, that the woods are full of stinging
gnats, and that the streamlets, converted
inte stagnant pools, are the birthplace of
myrisds of venomous mosquitoes. Some
skillful sonneteer chants the charm of the
sky and the loveliness of the field: but to
the eye of common sense, the one is con-
cave of burning brass and the ether plain
of blasted vegetation. Correspondents write
with mingled fustian and hyperbole of the
picturesqueness and grandeur of the noun
tains of the delights and designations of
the sea-shore. We fly to them both.
and return, mourning over the vanity of
human hope and the reality of dyspepsia.
There is no place to live on the mountains,
and in the valleys the heat is insupportable
BY the sea the breeze is from the land and
the accommodations are satire on the name
We roast in town; but we broil in the country
We stew at the springs; but we bake on the
beach. If we cannot avoid the fire of the
season, what matters our form of culinary
preparation?
Though none of us have discovered the re-
gion which is delightful in summer, it is sweet
to believe that the region exists Places that
hold us with spell at other times, disenchant
us while Sirius burns. Sorrento is thought
by many to be the fairest spot on earth: aud
yet who that could get away has ever spent
summer there? AS general rule, the more
warm weather country has the more dis
agreeable it is. "There endless summer
reigns;" ''No season but summer" ''The
summer circles all the joyous year." are
cheap phrases of rhetoric which pass for elo-
quenoe among those who do not understand
the use of language, or the prosaic quality
of heat. The lands ofgendless summer are
Stunned by all save those obliged to dwell in
them. The tropics are attractive to
the imagination and repulsive to the
senses. Nature makes them hateful
with prodigality, and shows her
opinion of them by the race she puts there.
Egypt, with all her associations of age. and
learning and mystery, is only plain of
burning sand, where nothing but its reputa-
tion detains our wandering feet. How Cleo
patra, who stands to us for all feminine fasci-
nations, could have lived in that blazing
desert, ia past all finding out. How she could
have kept the great Caius there, though
backed by all her Establishments aud bewil-
dering charms; how she could make him for
get ambition, which was the god of his
idolatry, in the soft twining of her rounded
arms, with the mercury above 120 degrees in
the shade, is not to be accounted for by any
knowledge of mans weakness, or any pene-
tration of woman S art. The Goddess of Love
herself would be unlovely under such circum-
stances; and the ideal beauty every poet
dreams of would repel when her only thought
was how to keep cool.
The present summer which, thank Heaven :
has breathed its last, has made the season
hateful in all climes, and under all conditions
They who believed themselves salamanders
Ionged, during the torrid weeks, for Spitz-
bergen and the ever-frozen sea. There is no
comfort or consolation in the sweltering
period, which, for human satisfaction, should
be banished from the year. With all its let
ters of recommendation, summer is an inn
postor and a cheat. 1t corroborates the
theories of Cabanis respecting the relations
between the physical and ethical, and goes
far to show that the keeping of the com
mandments and the observation of the laws
is q thing of temperature and atmosphere.
Summer is a remunerative evil to crops and
watering-paces, but to humanity and civil
zation it is perennial affection. So much,
at least, we may exclaim in the heat of oul
mamoFV. and HAVING said III wa faal heftar aG