memorable July 15, (St. Swithin,) people talk of the result with as much
certainty as a merchant calculates on _trade winds_; and in like manner,
hackney-coachmen and umbrella-makers have their _trade rains_. Indeed,
there are, as Shakespeare's contented Duke says, "books in the running
brooks, and good in every thing;"[1] and so far from neglecting to turn
the ill-wind to our account, we are disposed to venture a few seasonable
truisms for the gratification of our readers, although a wag may say our
subject is a dry one.

[1] Only the other evening we heard two sons of the whip on a
hackney-coach stand thus invoke the showery deity: "God send us a
good heavy shower;" then the fellows looked upwards, chuckled, and
rubbed their hands.

In England, the weather is public news. Zimmerman, however, thinks it is
not a safe topic of discourse. "Your company," says he, "may be _hippish_."
Shenstone, too, says a fine day is the only enjoyment which one man does
not envy another. All this is whimsical enough; but doubtless we are more
operated on by _the weather_ than by any thing else. Perhaps this is
because we are islanders; for talk to an "intellectual" man about the
climate, and out comes something about our "insular situation, aqueous
vapours, condensation," &c. Then take up a newspaper on any day of a wet
summer, and you see a long string of paragraphs, with erudite authorities,
about "the weather," average annual depth of rain, &c.; and a score of
lies about tremendous rains, whose only authority, like that of most
miracles, is in their antiquity or repetition. In short, _water_ is one of
the most popular subjects in this age of inquiry. What were the first
treatises of the _Useful Knowledge_ Society? _Hydrostatics_ and
_Hydraulics_. What is the attraction at Sadler's Wells, Bath, and
Cheltenham, but water? the Brighton people, too, not content with the sea,
have even found it necessary to superadd to their fashionable follies,
artificial mineral waters, with whose fount the grossest duchess may in a
few days recover from the repletion of a whole season; and the minister,
after the jading of a session, soon resume his wonted complacency and good
humour.[2] Our aquatic taste is even carried into all our public
amusements; would the festivities in celebration of the late peace have
been complete without the sham fight on the Serpentine? To insure the run
of a melo-drama, the New River is called in to flow