Page:Calendar of the London Seasons.pdf/7

430 is so cool, putting Piccadilly, from two till five, out of the question: there is always shade on one side or other of the street, a shade which you doubly enjoy, on the principle of contrast. It is satisfactory to think how hot the people must be opposite: then, though I do not eat ice myself, I can suppose other people doing it. If they do, an eastern poet might gain new ideas about coolness and fragrance, while enjoying the coloured coldnesses at Grange's. Towards the close, flowers begin to pass away; you are not met at every second step in Regent's Street by a bunch of moss-roses—a little faded, it is true, allegories by the way of our pleasures, but sweet notwithstanding. Dark-eyed pinks no longer heap the stands in such profusion; but then fruit is come in, such fruit as London only can furnish. I confess that I have no simple and natural tastes about gathering it myself. My experiences in that way have been unfortunate. I once picked some strawberries, and disturbed a whole colony of frogs; I once gathered a plum, and was stung by a wasp; and my latest experience regarded a peach, which hung— "With rosy cheek turn'd to the sun   Upon a southern wall." There is an old proverb which says, "Tell me your company, and I will tell you yourself." By this rule the peach would be severely judged, for its associates were earwigs. I can't say, for I made no trial of its merits: the sight of its friends were enough for me. I pass over a horde of other miseries, such as stooping in the sun, thorns, dirt, &c., and will only observe, that fruit never looks to such an advantage as it does on china, whether Dresden, Sevres, or even Worcester. There are two seasons when Covent-garden will more especially reward a visit,—at the beginning of summer and at the close. Flora holds her court in the first instance, and Pomona in the second. Pass along the centre arcade, and it is lined with trophies of the parterre or of the orchard, and you may look upon the early roses, and grow sentimental about or become unsophisticated, and go back to the innocent enjoyments of your childhood while gazing on the crimson-sided apples. I like, too, Hungerford Market; it gives one the idea of a Dutch picture. People wear mere bargaining faces; fruit and flowers have their price, but fish were sent into the world, at least, into the market, to be cheapened. Everybody beats down the price of a fresh pair of soles, or a fine turbot. It is just the sort of place for a new edition of the old anecdote of a well-known legal peer, who, feeling the necessity of reform among fishmongers, and retrenchment in their bills, determined on "shaming the rogues." He took his station at the dinner-table in all the triumph of a good bargain, that ovation of daily life, when "there was a place where the turbot was not." Instead of that, he met his lady's eyes, triumphant in her turn, with a consciousness of a good bargain also,—"My dear, fish was excessively dear to-day, and poor Mrs. So-and-so called in great distress, her fishmonger having disappointed her; so I let her have the turbot for—"exactly one-half what her unfortunate husband had paid for it. The moral of this story is,—we English people delight in a moral—not a moral to be deduced or inferred, but a nice, rounded, little moral,