Excerpt from The English Year: Summer Summer, as compared with the seasons on either side of it, may be looked upon in Spite Of many exceptions as a time of puberty, when vigour keeps, so far as we see, at a constant point. There are indeed only two seasons, summer and Winter, two static times bound together by the changing months of spring and autumn. But the tide of the year, rising in spring, is quicker, more sudden, than the ebb, though nothing is quite sudden in this happy island of quiet gradations, where the days are bound, each to each, by lineal affection. One day in late June, almost before we are aware, the country before us is at the full - the tide is in. The green waters have quietly made through the creeks and inlets and crept through the ridges Of the sands. They have hidden the rocks that sloped down to the sand; and the scenery of the shore, various if bleak, is clean gone under an everlasting wash of twinkling ripples. One may speak of the summer overcoming the face Of the country very much in the same terms as one may speak of the rising sea. The green leaves are a tide that hides the tracery of bough and twig, not much unlike the flowing of the sea over sand and rock. Many shapes and forms give place to one wash of colour. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.