New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-09-02
THE FALSE GLORTEs OF SUMNER.


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 rhymers 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 subtle causes, the Summer
has come to represent whatever beauty,
sweetness and richness there may be in life,
no less than the fruitage and fruitiOn OF the
fondest wishes and highest aspirations. One
would imagine from all this rhythmic ado and
miscellaneous mellihuence, that Summer was
peculiar atmospheric condition of Parnassus to
which no mortal, even though drunk with the
wine of pOesy had ever been admitted. Ana
vet the season is literally scattered all over
the planet-toO much so to enforce the belef
that it il blessing. Go where we VIII, unless
to the peaks of the Alps or Himalayas, 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 superintendent SHOWS;
and vet who that has been in Moscow OF st.
Petersburg, during July or August, has not
found himself in melting moOd' Stockholm.
IL,
anything but comfortable in those months;
and Greenland itselfis not incapable OF produc-
ing calorfc griefs. While the dog-star RACED,
we haye often sought in vain for sequestered
spots wherein the thermometer might play an
unconspicuOus part. We are profoundly skep-
teal if there be any such places on the sur
face of the globe; and we have always ques-
toned if Sir John Franklin, amid the Arctic
icebergs, did not die of sunstroke.
Of all the seasons, Summer has the least to
recommend it; indeed may be said TO be the
most uncomfortable. Spring, Autumn, and Win
ter have their pleasures, their pleasantnesses
and their poetry but Summer, by its sultri-
ness, its mOnotOny, and its heat, makes COM
fort a mOckery and satisfaction a sham. 1t Ia
all well 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 streamets. we vlsiC
them only to find, to our disappointment ana
disgust that the woods are full OF Singing
gnats, and that the streamlets, converted into
stagnant pools, are the birthplace OF
myriads of venomOus musketOes. Some
skillful sonneteer chants the charm of
the sky and the loneliness of the
field but, to the eye of common sense,
the one is c0ncave of burning brass and the
other plain of blasted vegetation. Cor
respondents write with mingled fustian and
hyperbole of the picturesqueness and grandeur
of the mountains of the delights and dissipa-
tons of the sea-shOre. We fly to them both.
and return, mourning over the vanity of hui
man 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 accom-
modatiOns are a 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 preparationi
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 and yet
who that could get away has ever spent a
Summer theref AS general rule, the more
warm weather country has the more dis
agreeable it il. There endless Summer
"reigns;r 4" No season is hut Summer" 1.-The
Summer circles all the joyous year, are
cheap phrases of rhetoric which pass for elo
quence among those who do not understand
the use of language, or the prosaic quality
of heat. The lands of endless Sum-
mer 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 prodigalty, and shows her
opinion of them by the race sne puts there.
Egypt, with all her associations of age, and
learning, and mystery, is only plain of
burning sand, where nothing but its reputa
ton detains our wandering feet. How Cleo
patra, who stands to us for all feminine
destinations, could have lived in that blazing
desert, is past all finding out. How she could
have kept the great Caius there, though
backed by all her Establishments and bewil-
dering charms how she could make him
forget ambition. which was the god
of his idolatry, in the soft twining of her
rounded farms, with the mercury above 1902
in the shade, is not to be accounted for by
any knowledge of mans weakness, or any |
of woman's art. The Goddess of |
Love herself would be unlovely under such |
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 chimes, and under all conditions.
They who believed themselves salamanders |
longed, during the torrid weeks, for Spitz-
bergen and the frozen sea. There is no
comfort or consolation in the sweltering period, |
which, for human satisfaction, should be ban
ished from the year. With all its letters of |
Summer is an impostOr and |