The eighth was
August, being rich arrayed
In garment all of gold, down to the ground:
Yet rode he not, but led a lovely maid
Forth by the lily hand, the which was crowned
With ears of corn, and full her hand was found.
That was the righteous Virgin, which of old
Lived here on earth, and plenty made abound;
But after wrong was loved, and justice sold,
She left th' unrighteous world, and was to heaven
extolled.
Spenser
DESCRIPTIVE
August comes, and though the
harvest though the harvest-fields are nearly ripe and
ready for the sickle, cheering the heart of man with
the prospect of plenty that surrounds him, yet there
are signs on every hand that summer is on the wane,
and that the time is fast approaching when she will
take her departure. We catch faint glances of autumn
peeping stealthily through openings where the leaves
have already fallen, and among berries where summer
hung out her blossoms; and sometimes hear his rustling
footstep among the dry seed-vessels, which have
usurped the place of her flowers. Though the
convolvulus still throws its straggling bells about
the hedges, the sweet May-buds are dead and gone, and in their place the green
haws hang crudely upon the
branches. The winds come not a-Maying amongst them
now. Nearly all the field-flowers are gone; the
beautiful feathered grasses that waved like gorgeous
plumes in the breeze and sunshine are cut down and
carried away, and in their place there is only green flowerless after-math.
Many of the birds that sung in the green chambers
which she hung for them with her richest arras, have
left her and gone over the sea. What few singers
remain are silent, and preparing for their departure;
and when she hears the robin, his song comforts her
not, for she knows that he will chant a sweeter lay to
autumn, when she lies buried beneath the fallen
leaves. Musing at times over her approaching end, upon
the hillsides, they are touched by her beauty, and
crimson up with the flowers of the heather, and long
leagues of wild moorland catch the reflected blush,
which, goes reddening up like sunshine along the
mountain slopes. The blue harebell peeps out in wonder
to see such a land of beauty, and seems to shake its
fragile bells with delight. In waste-places, the tall
golden-rod, the scarlet poppy, and the large ox-eyed
daisy muster, as if for a procession, and there wave
their mingled banners of gold, crimson, and silver, as
summer passes by, while the little eyebright, nestling
among the grass, looks up and shews its white petals,
streaked with green and gold.
But, far as summer has
advanced, several of her beautiful flowers and curious
plants may still be found in perfection in the
water-courses, and beside the streams�pleasanter
places to ramble along than the dusty and all but
flowerless waysides in August. There we find the
wild-mint, with its lilac-coloured blossoms, standing
like a nymph knee-deep in water, and making all the
air around fragrant. And all along the margin by where
it grows, there is a flush of green, fresh as April;
and perhaps we find a few of the grand water-flags
still in flower, for they often bloom late, and seem
like gold and purple banners hanging out over some
ancient keep, whose colours are mirrored in the moat
below.
There also the beautiful
arrow-head, with its snow-white flowers and
arrow-pointed leaves, may be found, looking like ivy
growing about the water. Many a rare plant, too little
known, flourishes beside and in our sedge-fringed
meres and bright meadow streams, where the overhanging
trees throw cooling shadows over their grassy margins,
and the burning noon of summer never penetrates. Such
pleasant places are always cool, for there the grass
never withers, nor are the paths ever wholly dry; and
when we come upon them unaware, after having quitted
the heat and glare of the brown dusty highway, it
seems like travelling into another country, whose
season is spring. And there the water-plantain spreads
its branches, and throws out its pretty broad leaves
and rose-tinted flowers, which spread up to the very
border of the brook, and run in among the pink-flowers
of the knot-grass, which every ripple sets in motion.
Further on, the purple
loosestrife shews its gorgeous spikes of flowers,
seeming like a border woven by the moist fingers of
the Naiads, to curtain their crystal baths; while the
water-violets appear as if growing to the roofs of
their caves, the foliage clinging to the
vaulted-silver, and only the dark-blue flowers shewing
their heads above the water. There, too, is the
bog-pimpernel, almost as pretty as its scarlet sister,
which may still be found in bloom by the wayside,
though its flowers are not so large. Beautiful it
looks, a very flower in arms, nursed by the yielding
moss, on which it leans, as if its slender stem and
prettily-formed leaves were too delicate to rest on
common earth so had a soft pillow provided for its
exquisite flowers to repose upon. Nor does it change,
when properly dried, if transferred to the herbarium,
but there looks as fresh and beautiful as it did while
growing the very fairy of flowers.
Nor will the splendid
silver-weed be overlooked, with its prettily-notched
leaves, which underneath have a rich silvery
appearance; while the golden-coloured flowers, which
spread out every way, are soft as velvet to the feel.
Then the water has its grass like the field, and is
sometimes covered with great meadows of green, among
which are seen flowers as beautiful as grow on the
inland pastures. The common duck-weed covers miles of
water with its little oval-shaped leaves, and will
from one tiny root soon send out buds enough to cover
a large pool, for every shoot it sends forth becomes
flower and seed while forming part of the original
stem, and these are reproduced by myriads, and would
soon cover even the broad Atlantic, were the water
favourable to its growth, for only the land could
prevent it from multiplying further.
Row a boat through this green
landlooking-like meadow, and almost by the time you
have reached the opposite shore�though you have
sundered millions of leaves, and made a glassy course
wide enough for a carriage to pass through the water,
not a trace will be left, where all was bright and
clear as a broad silver mirror, but all again be
covered with green, as with a smooth carpet. Beside
its velvet-meadows, the water has its tall forests and
spreading underwood, and stateliest amongst its trees
are the flower-bearing rushes, one of which is the
very Lady of the Lake, crowned with a red tiara of
blossoms. The sword-leaved bur-weed, and many another
aquatic plant, are like bramble, fern, and shrub, the
underwood of the tall sedge, which the nodding
bulrushes overtop. Nor is forest or field frequented
with more beautiful birds or insects than those found
among our water-plants.
Then we have the beautiful
white water-lily, which seems to bring an old world
before us, for it belongs to the same species which
the Egyptians held sacred, and the Indians worshipped.
To them it must have seemed strange, in the dim
twilight of early years, when nature was so little
under-stood, to see a flower disappear at night,
leaving on the surface no trace of where it bloomed�to
re-appear again in all its beauty, as it still does,
on the following morning. And lovely it looks,
floating double lily and shadow, with its rounded
leaves, looking like green resting places for this
Queen of the Waters to sit upon, while dipping at
pleasure her ivory sandals in the yielding silver; or,
when rocked by a gentle breeze we have fancied they
looked like a moving fairy-fleet on the water, with
low green hulls, and white sails, slowly making for
the shore.
The curious little bladder-wort
is another plant that immerses itself until the time
for flowering arrives, when it empties all its
water-cells, fills them with air, and rises to the
surface. It may now be seen almost everywhere among
water-plants. In a few more weeks it will disappear,
eject the air, fill its little bladders once more with
water, and, sinking down, ripen its seed in its watery
bed, where it will lie until another summer warns and
wakens it to life, when it will once more empty its
water-barrels, fill them with air, and rising to the
light and sunshine, again beautify the surface with
its flowers. Sometimes water-insects open the valves
of these tiny bladders, and get inside; but they
cannot get out again until the cells are once more
unlocked to receive air. Many another rare and curious
plant may be found by the water-side in August, where
sometimes the meadow-sweet still throws out a few late
heads of creamy-coloured bloom, that scent the air
with a fragrance delicious as May throws out, when all
her hawthorns are in blossom, for though June is a
season
'Half-prinked
with spring, with summer half-embrowned,'
August is a month richly
flushed with the last touches of summer, toned down
here and there with the faint grays of autumn, before
the latter has taken up his palette of kindled colours.
Still, we cannot look around,
and miss so many favourite flowers, which met our eye
on every side a few weeks ago, without noticing many
other changes. The sun sinks earlier in the evening;
mists rise here and there and dim the clear blue of
twilight; we see wider rents through the foliage of
the trees and hedges, and, above all, we miss the
voices of those sweet singers, whose pretty throats
seemed never at rest, but from morning to night shook
their speckled feathers with swellings of music. Yet
how almost imperceptibly the days draw in, like the
hands of a large clock, that appear motionless, yet
move on with true measured footsteps to the march
beaten by Time. So do the days come out and go in, and
move through the land of light and darkness, to the
shelving steep, down which undated centuries have shot
and been forgotten. Soon those pleasant meadows that
are still so green, and where the bleating of white
flocks, and the lowing of brindled herds, are yet
heard, will be silent, the hedges naked, and not even
the hum of an insect sound in the air. Where the
nearly ripe harvest, when the breeze blows, now
murmurs like the sea in its sleep, and where the merry
voices of sun-tanned reapers will soon be heard, the
trampled stubble only will be seen, and brown bare
patches of miry earth, where the straw has blackened
and rotted, shew like the coverings of newly-made
graves.
Even now unseen hands are
tearing down the tapestry of flowers which summer had
hung up to shelter her orchestra of birds in the
hedges. What few flowers the woodbine again throws
out�children of its old age�have none of the bloom and
beauty about them like those born in the lusty
sunshine of early summer. For even she is getting
gray, and the white down of thistles, dandelion,
groundsel, and many other hoary seeds streak her
sun-browned hair. There are blotches of russet upon
the ferns that before only unfolded great fans of
green, and in the sunset the fields of lavender seem
all on fire, as if the purple heads of the flowers had
been kindled by the golden blaze which fires the
western sky.
Fainter, and further between
each note, the shrill chithering of the grasshopper
may still be heard; and as we endeavour to obtain a
sight of him, the voice fades away beyond the
beautiful cluster of red-coloured pheasant's-eye,
which country maidens still call rose-a-ruby,
believing that if they have not a sweetheart before it
goes out of flower, they will have to wait for another
year until it blooms again. The dwarf convolvulus
twines around the corn, and the bear-bine coils about
the hedges, the former winding round in the direction
of the sun, and the latter twining in a contrary
direction. Sometimes, where the little pink
convolvulus has bound several stems of corn together,
and formed such a tasteful wreath as a young lady
would be proud to wear on her bonnet, the nest of the
pretty harvest-mouse may be found. This is the
smallest quadruped known to exist �the very
humming-bird of mammalia�for when full-grown it will
scarcely weigh down a worn farthing, while the tiny
nest, often containing as many as eight or nine young
ones, may be shut up easily within the palm of the
hand, though so compactly made, that if rolled along
the floor like a ball, not a single fibre of which it
is formed will be displaced.
How the little mother manages
to suckle so large a family within a much less compass
than a common cricket-ball, is still a puzzle to our
greatest naturalists. It is well worth hiding
your-self for half an hour among the standing-corn,
just for the pleasure of seeing it run up stalks of
wheat to its nest, which it does much easier than we
could climb a wide and easy staircase, for its weight
does not even shake a grain out of the ripened ears
that surmount its pretty chamber. It may be kept in a
little cage, like a white mouse, and fed upon corn;
water it laps like a dog; and it will turn a wheel as
well as any squirrel. Often it amuses itself by
coiling its tail around anything it can get at, and
hanging with its mite of a body downward, will swing
to and fro for many minutes together. One, while thus
swinging, would time its motions to the ticking of the
clock that stood in the apartment, and fall asleep
while suspended.
There are now thousands of
lady-birds about, affording endless amusement to
children; only a few years ago, they invaded our
southern coast in such clouds, that the piers had to
be swept, and millions of them perished in the sea;
many vessels crossing over from France had their decks
covered with them. That pretty blue butterfly, which
looks like a winged harebell, is now seen everywhere;
and as it balances itself beside some late cluster of
purple sweet-peas, it is difficult to tell which is
the insect and which the flower, until it springs up
and darts off with a jerk along its zigzag way. On
some of the trees we now see a new crop of leaves
quite as fresh and beautiful as ever made green the
boughs in vernal May, and a pleasant appearance they
have beside the early-changing foliage that soonest
falls, looking in some places as if spring, summer,
and autumn had combined their varied foliage together.
And never does the country look more beautiful than
now, if the eye can at once take in a wide range of
scenery from some steep hillside. Patches of green,
where the cattle are feeding on the second crop of
grass, are all one emerald � looking in the distance
as if April had come again, and tinted them with the
softest flush of spring; and if you are near enough,
you may still hear the milk-maid's carol morning and
night, for that green eddish causes the cows to yield
as much milk as they did when feeding knee-deep amid
the flowers of May. Then great fields of ripe corn
rush in like floods of sunshine between these green
spaces, widening and yellowing out on every hand,
shewing here and there a thin dark band, which would
hardly arrest the eye, were it not beaded with trees
that shoot up from amid these low hedgerows.
And in the remote distance,
where the same dark lines run between the cornfields,
they look like streaks of grass on a yellow clay land
in spring�a fallow, sun-lighted land, where beside
these thin lines no green thing grows. The roofs of
the little cottages are all that is seen to float amid
this golden ocean of corn, which appears to have
washed over wall, window, and door, and left but the
sloping thatch on the face of that great yellow sea of
waving and rolling ears. That old roadside alehouse,
which we thought so picturesque while eating our bread
and cheese in the sunny porch an hour ago, is,
excepting the roof and the tall sign-post, lost in the
long perspective of sweeping acres of cornfields; and
the winding road we passed, which leads to it, seems
to have been filled up by the long eary ranks that,
from here, appear to have closed since we came by. We
no longer hear the creaking of the old sign, though
the gust that just now swept by and sent a white wave
over the corn, must have made the old Green Dragon
sigh again as it swung before the door.
Soon that great bay-window,
which looks so pleasantly over the long range of
corn-lands, will be filled with thirsty reapers in the
evening, and well-to-do farmers in the daytime, as
they ride down to see how the work of harvest
progresses, while great bottles and wooden flagons
will be passing all day long, out full, and in empty,
at that old porch, until all the corn is garnered.
Children, who come with their parents, because they
have no other home, until harvest is over, will be
hanging about that great long trough before the door,
filling bottles with water for the reapers, and
throwing it over one another, and wetting the hay that
stands ever ready in those movable racks for any
mounted horseman who chooses to give his nag a bite as
well as a sup, when he pulls up at that well-known
halting-place. Right proud is mine host of his great
kitchen, with its clean sanded floor, and white long
settles, that will seat a score or more of customers.
You may see your face in the brass copper and
block-tin cooking utensils that hang around, for often
during the hay and corn harvest, the great farmers
call and dine or lunch there, whose homes lie a long
way from those open miles of cornfields. It would make
a hungry man's mouth water to see what juicy hams and
fine streaky flitches ever hang up on the oaken beams
which span the ceiling of that vast kitchen. As to
poultry�finer chickens were never eaten than those we
saw picking about the horse-trough, nor do plumper
ducks swim than those we sent quacking into the green
pond�covered with duck-weed�when our ragged terrier
barked at them as we left the porch.
In some places, if it has been
what the country-people call a forward summer, harvest
has already commenced, though it is more general about
the beginning of next month, which heralds in autumn.
And now the fruit is ripe on the great orchard-trees,
the plums are ready to drop through very mellowness,
and there is a rich redness on the sunny-side of the
pears, and on many of the apples. What
strangely-shaped trees are still standing in many of
our old English orchards, some of them so aged, that
all record of when they were first planted was lost a
century or two ago!
Apple-trees so old that that their arms have to be supported
on crutches, as the decayed trunk
would not bear the branches when they are weighed down
with fruit, for some of these codlins are as big as a
baby's head. Many of these hoary trees are covered
with misletoe, or wrapped about with great flakes of
silver moss, causing them in the distance to look like
bearded Druids, while some of the trunks are bent and
humped with knots, and stoop until they are almost
double under the weight of fruit and years.
And when does pear ever taste
so sweet or plum so rich and mellow, as those which
have fallen through very ripeness, and are picked up
from the clean green after-math under the
orchard-trees, as soon as they have fallen?�few that
are gathered can ever be compared with these. A hot
day in August, a parching thirst, and a dozen
golden-drop plums, picked up fresh from the cool
grass, is a thing to be remembered, and talked about
after, like Justice Shallow's pippins, in Shakspeare.
They must not be shaken down by the wind, but slip off
the boughs through sheer ripeness, and leave the
stalks behind, so rich are they then that they would
even melt in the crevice of an iceberg. But we have
now reached the borders of a fruitful land, where the
corn is ready for the sickle, and the wild fruits hang
free for all; for though the time of summer's
departure has arrived, she has left plenty behind for
all, neither forgetting beast nor bird in her bounty.
And now the voices of the labourers who are coming up
to the great gathering, may be heard through the
length and breadth of the land, for the harvest-cry
has sounded.
HISTORICAL
In the old Roman calendar,
August bore the name of Sextilis, as the sixth month
of the series, and consisted but of twenty-nine days.
Julius Caesar, in reforming the calendar of his
nation, extended it to thirty days. When, not long
after, Augustus conferred on it his own name, he took
a day from February, and added it to August, which has
consequently ever since consisted of thirty-one days.
This great ruler was born in September, and it might
have been expected that he would take that month under
his patronage; but a number of lucky things had
happened to him in August, which, moreover, stood next
to the month of his illustrious predecessor, Julius;
so he preferred Sextilis as the month which should be
honoured by bearing his name, and August it has ever
since been among all nations deriving their
civilisation from the Romans.
CHARACTERISTICS OF AUGUST
In height of mean temperature,
August comes only second, and scarcely second, to
July; it has been stated, for London, as 61.6�. The sun, which enters the
constellation Virgo on
the 23rd, is, on the 1st of the month, above the
horizon at London for 15 hours 22 minutes; on the
last, for 13 hours 34 minutes: at Edinburgh, for 16
hours 40 minutes, and 14 hours 20 minutes, on these
days respectively.
August 1st
