At the
midsummer which we are now speaking of, I must needs confess the
noontide sun came down more fervently than I found altogether tolerable;
so that I was fain to shift my position with the shadow of the
shrubbery, making myself the movable index of a sun-dial that reckoned
up the hours of an almost interminable day.
For each day seemed endless, though never wearisome. As far as your
actual experience is concerned, the English summer-day has positively no
beginning and no end. When you awake, at any reasonable hour, the sun is
already shining through the curtains; you live through unnumbered hours
of Sabbath quietude, with a calm variety of incident softly etched upon
their tranquil lapse; and at length you become conscious that it is
bed-time again, while there is still enough daylight in the sky to make
the pages of your book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such
season, hangs down a transparent veil through which the by-gone day
beholds its successor; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London,
it may be soberly affirmed of the more northern parts of the island,
that Tomorrow is born before Yesterday is dead. They exist together in
the golden twilight, where the decrepit old day dimly discerns the face
of the ominous infant; and you, though a mere mortal, may simultaneously
touch them both, with one finger of recollection and another of
prophecy.
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