June 30. from St. Chrysostom, that "from the head of St. Paul when it was cut off there came St. Paul, the Apostle. St. Martial, Bp. of not one drop of blood, but there ran foun Limoges, 3d Cent. Paul, the apostle, was martyred, according to some accounts, on the 29th of June, in the year, 65; according to others in the month of May, 66. A Romish writer fables that, before he was beheaded, he "loked vp into heuen, markynge his foreheed and his breste with the sygne of the crosse," although that sign was an after invention; and that," as soone as the heed was from the body," it said "Jesus Christus fyfty tymes." Another pretends tains of milk;" and that "we have by tradition, that the blessed head gave three leaps, and at each of them there sprung up a fountain where the head fell: which fountains remain to this day, and are reverenced with singular devotion by all Christian Catholics." The fictions of the Romish church, and its devotions to devices, are innumerable. FLORAL DIRECTORY. * Ribadeneira July is the seventh month of the year. According to ancient reckoning it was the fifth, and called QUINTILIS, until Mark Antony denominated it July, in compliment to Caius Cæsar, the Roman dictator, whose surname was Julius, who improved the calendar, and was born in this month. July was called by the Saxons henmonath, which probably expressed the meaning of the German word hain, signifying wood or trees; and hence henmonath might mean foliage month. They likewise called it heymonath, or hay month; " because," says Verstegan, "therein they usually mowed and made their hay harvest ;" and they also denominated it Lida-aftera, meaning the second "Lida," or second month after the sun's descent.* The beautiful representation preceding Spenser's personification of July, on the preceding page, was designed and engraved by Mr. Samuel Williams, of whom it should in justice be said, that his talents have enriched the Every-Day Book with most of its best illustrations. Now comes July, and with his fervid noon Mr. Leigh Hunt in his Months, after remarking that "July is so called after Julius Cæsar, who contrived to divide his names between months and dynasties, and among his better deeds of ambition reformed the calendar," proceeds to notice, that "The heat is greatest in this month on account of its previous duration. The reason why it is less so in August is, that the days are then much shorter, and the influence of the sun has been gradually diminishing. The farmer is still occupied in getting the productions of the earth into his garners; but those who can avoid labour enjoy as much rest and shade as possible. There is a sense of heat and quiet all over nature. The birds are silent. The little brooks are dried up. The earth is chapped with parching. The shadows of the trees are particularly grateful, heavy, and still. The oaks, which are freshest because latest in leaf, form noble clumpy canopies, looking, as you lie under them, of a strong and emulous green against the blue sky. The traveller delights to cut across the country through the fields and the leafy lanes, where nevertheless the flints sparkle with heat. The cattle get into the shade, or stand in the water. The active and aircutting swallows, now beginning to as semble for migration, seek their prey about the shady places, where the insects, though of differently compounded natures, 'fleshless and bloodless,' seem to get for coolness, as they do at other times for warmth. The sound of insects is also the only audible thing now, increasing rather than lessening the sense of quiet by its gentle contrast. The bee now and then sweeps across the ear with his and here and there the little musician of sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run mead: Keats. "Besides some of the flowers of last month, there are now candy-tufts, catchfly, columbines, egg-plant, French marygolds, lavateras, London-pride, marvel of Peru, veronicas, tuberoses, which seem born of the white rose and lily; and searlet-beans, which though we are apt to think little of them because they furnish us with a good vegetable, are quick and beautiful growers, and in a few weeks will hang a walk or trellis with an exuberant tapestry of scarlet and green. "The additional trees and shrubs in flower are bramble, button-wood, iteas, cistuses, climbers, and broom. Pimpernel, cockle, and fumitory, are now to be found in corn-fields, the blue-bell in wastes or by the road-sides; and the luxuriant hop is flowering. "The fruits begin to abound and are more noticed, in proportion to the necessity for them occasioned by the summerheat. The strawberries are in their greatest quantity and perfection; and Dr. Frank Sayers. currants, gooseberries, and raspberries, have a world of juice for us, prepared, as it were, in so many crowds of little bottles, in which the sunshine has turned the dews of April into wine. The strawberry lurks about under a beautiful leaf. Currants are also extremely beautiful. A handsome bunch looks like pearls or rubies, and an imitation of it would make a most graceful ear-ring. We have seen it, when held lightly by fair fingers, present as lovely a drop, and piece of contrast, as any holding hand in a picture of Titian. "Bulbous rooted flowers, that have almost done with their leaves, should now be taken up, and deposited in shallow wooden boxes. Mignionette should be transplanted into small pots, carnations be well attended to and supported, and auriculas kept clean from dead leaves and weeds, and in dry weather frequently watered. "It is now the weather for bathing, a refreshment too little taken in this country, either in summer or winter. We say in winter, because with very little care in placing it near a cistern, and having a leathern pipe for it, a bath may be easily filled once or twice a week with warm water; and it is a vulgar error that the warm bath relaxes. An excess, either warm or cold, will relax; and so will any other excess but the sole effect of the warm bath moderately taken is, that it throws off the bad humours of the body by opening and clearing the pores. As to summer bathing, a father may soon teach his children to swim, and thus perhaps might be the means of saving their lives some day or other, as well as health. Ladies also, though they cannot bathe in the open air as they do in some of the West Indian islands and other countries, by means of natural basins among the rocks, might oftener make a substitute for it at home in tepid baths. The most beautiful aspects under which Venus has been painted or sculptured, have been connected with bathing: and indeed there is perhaps no one thing that so equally contributes to the three graces of health, beauty, and good temper;-to health, in putting the body into its best state; to beauty, in clearing and tinting the skin; and to good temper, in rescuing the spirits from the irritability occasioned by those formidable personages 'the nerves,' which nothing else allays in so quick and entire a manner. See a lovely passage on the subject of bathing in sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia,' where Philoclea, blushing, and withall smiling, making shamefastnesse pleasant, and pleasure shamefast, tenderly moved her feet, unwonted to feel the naked ground, until the touch of the cold water made a pretty kind of shrugging come over her body, like the twinkling of the fairest among the fixed stars.'” July 1. Sts. Julius St. Rumbold, Bp. A. D. 775. and Aaron. St. Theobald, or Thibault, 11th Cent. St. Gal I. Bp. 5th Cent. St. Calais, or Carilephus, A. D. 542. St. Leonorus, or Lunaire, Bp. St. Simeon Salus, 6th Cent. St. Thieri, A. D. 533. St. Cybar, A. D. 581. CHRONOLOGY. 1690. The battle of the Boyne, fought on this day, decided the fate of James II. and the Stuart tyranny, and established William III. on the throne of the people. A Morning's Walk in July. But when mild morn, in saffron stole, The groves and castled cliffs appear July 3. St. St. Phocas, a Gardener, A. D. 303. Cent. The Bleeding Image. On the 3d of July is annually celebrated, in Paris, in the church of St. Leu and St. Giles, a solemn office, in commemoration of a miracle wrought by the blessed virgin, in la Rue aux Ours, or the street for the bears; the history of which is as follows:---In the year 1518, a soldier coming out of a tavern in this Bear-street, where he had been gambling, and losing his money and clothes, was blaspheming the name of God; and as he passed by the image of the holy virgin, standing very quietly and inoffensively at the corner of the street, he struck it, or her, furiously with a knife he had in his hand; on which God permitted, as the modern and modest tellers of this tale say, the image to bleed abundantly. The ministers of justice were informed, and the wretch was seized, conducted to the spot where he had committed the sacrilege, tied to a post, and scourged, from six o'clock in the morning till night, till his eyes dropped cut; his tongue was bored with a hot iron, and his body was cast into the fire. The blessed image was transported to Rome. This was the origin of a ceremony still remembered, and which once was very curious. The zeal of the inhabitants of Bear-street was conspicuous, and their devotion to the blessed virgin not less so. At first they only made the figure of the soldier, as we in England do of Guy Faux, and threw it into the fire; by degrees the feast became more solemn, and the soldier, who had been rudely fashioned out of faggots, was at last a composition of fireworks, which, after being carried in procession through the streets of Paris, took a flight into the air, to the great joy and edification of the Parisians, particularly of Bear-street. At last, however, the magistrates wisely recollected that the streets being narrow, and the buildings might happen, and it would then be still numerous in that part of the city, a fire more miraculous if the holy image should travel from Rome to Paris to extinguish the flames: not to mention that the holy image might not at that precise moment be so plentifully supplied as on a similar occasion our friend Gulliver was. In 1744, therefore, they forbad any future fire-work soldiers, and the inhabitants of Bear-street, were once more poor distressed reduced to their man of wood, whom they continue to burn with great affection every 3d of July, after having walked him about Paris three days. This figure is now made of osier, clothed, and armed with a knife, and of so horrid an appearance, it would undoubtedly frighten women and children who did not know the story of the sacrilegious soldier; as it is, they believe they see him breathe blas phemy. Messieurs, the associated gentlemen of Bear-street, give the money formerly spent in fireworks, to make a procession to the proxy of the blessed image which now stands where the bleeding one did, and to say a solemn mass to the blessed virgin, for the souls of the defunct gentlemen, associates of Bearstreet. The mummery existed under Napoleon, as appears by the preceding particulars, dated Paris, July 12, 1807, and may be seen in the Sunday Advertiser, of the 19th of that month. On the 3d of July, 1810, a small loaf the equestrian statue at Charing-cross, to fastened by a string, was suspended from which was attached a placard, stating, that it was purchased from a baker, and was extremely deficient in weight, and was one of a numerous batch. notice concluded by simply observing, The "Does this not deserve the aid of par * Ode on the Approach of Summer liament?" This exhibition attracted a great crowd of people, until the whole of the loaf was nearly washed away by subsequent heavy rain. The Dog-days. "The Dog-star rages." Sirius, or the Dog-star, is represented as in the above engraving, on a garnet gem, in lord Besborough's collection, etched by Worlidge. The late Mr. William Butler, in his Chronological Exercises, says, that on this day" commence, according to the almanacs, the Canicular, or Dog-days, which are a certain number of days preceding and following the heliacal rising of Canicula, or the Dog-star, in the morning. Their beginning is usually fixed in the calendars on the 3d of July, and their termination on the 11th of August; but this is a palpable mistake, since the heliacal rising of this star does not now take place, at least in our latitude, till near the latter end of August; and in five or six thousand years more, Canicula may chance to be charged with bringing frost and snow, as it will then, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, rise in November and December." Dr. Hutton remarks, that some authors say, from Hippocrates and Pliny, that the day this star first rises in the morning, the sea boils, wine turns sour, dogs begin to grow mad, the bile increases and irritates, and all animals grow languid; also," the diseases it usually occasions in men are burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies. The Romans sacrificed a brown dog every year to Canicula, at his first rising to ap pease his rage." A Cambridge contributor to the EveryDay Book affirms, that, in the year 1824, an edict was issued there for all persons keeping dogs either to muzzle or tie them up, and many a dog was tied up by the neck as a sacrifice; whether to the Mayor or Canicular, this deponent saith not; but the act and deed gave rise to the following JEU D'ESPRIT. Mr. Brady observes, in his "Clavis Calendaria," "That the weather in July and August is generally more sultry than at any other period of the year, and that some particular diseases are consequently at that time more to be dreaded, both to man and beast, is past dispute. The exaggerated effects of the rising of Sirius are now, however, known to be groundless; and the superior heat usually felt during the Dog-days has been more philosophically accounted for. The sun, at this period of the year, not only darts his rays almost perpendicularly upon us, and of course with greater power; but has also continued to exert his influence through the spring and summer seasons, whereby the atmosphere and earth have received a warmth, proportioned to the continuity of its action; and moisture, in itself naturally cold, has been dissipated. Even in the course of a day, which has been aptly typified as a short year, the greatest effect of the sun is generally felt at about two o'clock, although it has then passed the meridian, because by having so much longer exerted its powers, its consequent effects are more than commensurate for the diminution of heat in its rays. The cold of winter in like manner augments about the time the days begin to increase, and continues to do so, for a considerable time after, because, at that season, the earth has become wet and chilled, from the effects of the preceding gradual decrease of power in the sun, although, at that time, when the cold is usually most severe, that orb is ascensive, and returning from the winter solstice: and our Saxon ancestors were experimentally so well aware of this latter circum. |
