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,