SUMMERING.

THE season of returning to town is apt to be the time when we ask ourselves why we ever go away. Home looks so delightful after absence; the joyous faces of meeting friends so cheer our hearts, and lift our spirits above the influence of fatigue and care, that we sometimes think it has been foolish to leave all these pleasant things, to wander over the face of the earth, to lie in strange beds, to toss on uneasy seas, to endure the company of strangers, to renounce one's favorite employments, and, above all, to relinquish the society of those whose society is the chief pleasure of life to us. Very wise people reproach us with all this; they say, what we cannot deny, that we should have been much more comfortable at home; that our own houses are more comfortable than hotels, our own beds than steamboat berths, our own dinners than any that we shall find elsewhere. These sensible remarks make us quite ashamed of our wanderings, perhaps. Comfort is so much the business of life with most of us, that we are quite sensitive to the reproach of having mistaken the way to it.

The reasons for going are less obvious than the reasons for staying, and the joy of returning makes us feel them with peculiar force.

But do we remember that this joy of reunion and return is

purchased by the absence and the journey, with all their trials and inconveniences, and could not have been felt without them? Iteration wears out even our best pleasures; emotions are not to be summoned at will; the home that we have never left is not the home that beams upon us after a temporary renunciation. Love our friends as we may, we love them better after we have lost sight of them for a while. Our employments tire, even in proportion to the ardor with which we pursue them, and their zest is only renewable on condition of some intervals of complete repose or change of object. So that for the mere purchase of intenser pleasure, it is worth while to refrain for a time; but there are stronger reasons for summer jaunting.

Supposing that our life has only a certain fixed amount of power, and that both happiness and duty command us to make the most of this power for the work that is given us to do, seasons of complete change and relaxation, even of new fatigue and voluntary privation, in unaccustomed directions, must be advantageous to our bodily and mental condition, since aching heads, and pinched and anxious hearts, often admonish us that too long perseverance in a single track is not congenial to so varied a nature as ours. Even the unbroken enjoyment of home luxuries and ease, is conducive to anything but strength, either of character or muscles. City life, especially, is notoriously unfavorable to vigorous and enduring health; its excitements tend, more through their ceaselessness than their intensity, perhaps, to insanity and premature decay, or sudden failure of the energies of nature. We are not of those who believe city life to be necessarily unwholesome. It would be so to animals, doubtless; but man's bodily condition depends so much upon ample and judicious exercise of his mental and

moral faculties, that some of the disadvantages of too close contact with others, and of employments more sedentary than those which are favorable to perfect health, are probably counteracted by the more wholesome uses he may make of brain and heart, when surrounded by fellow beings, than when in comparative solitude. Such a country life as we can imagine, might, indeed, unite all advantages; but we are talking of the actual, and not of the ideal.

Perhaps the best way of making the most of life, is that which is practised by so many of our citizens-living in the full town and partaking of all its intellectual excitements and means of culture, its cheering social amusements, its varied human interests and religious instruction, for the colder part of the year, while the fireside is so cosy and delightful; and in the summer learning a new chapter of life, finding out a new set of powers, associating with a new round and variety of character, discovering the ideas of other people on subjects on which we might suppose there could be but one way of thinking, and, in short, making ourselves as much new creatures as possible, with a continual reserve of our old habits and a constant tendency and desire to return to them. To say nothing of the wholesomeness of fresh air and hardy exercise the last a theme hardly to be mentioned to ears polite, in a country where it is not fashionable to be strong-this way of parcelling out life is certainly defensible, to say the least. One thing is certain, that those who have most thoroughly and rationally practised it are best prepared to defend it.

The question as to how and where the summer is to be spent, is quite another one. To some, the plain farm-house, with the early voices of birds, and the humbler noise of the farm-yard,

new milk for the children, tumbling in hay-mows and riding without saddle for stout boys, and a thousand pretty country sports for little girls; long walks, and rides, and fishing excursions for the elder, and shaded seats at noon, and pleasant windows at sunset for all, afford the needful change. To others, the sea-shore, with its variety and its sameness, its refreshing surf and its moonlight beach, is more congenial, and braces the limbs and spirits better. Others long for the excitement of watering-places to balance the excitement of the city, as he whose hands have become shaky with brandy must have his coffee very strong to steady his nerves. Others, again, dream of the novelties and wonders of foreign lands, and seek the verification of their idea at the expense of a long sea voyage, and the encounter of strange people and strange tongues. All this while, the wise shake their heads, and congratulate themselves upon being comfortable at home.

The money that is expended in this summer change, is a prominent objection with most of those who condemn it. They speak as if they, or any of us, lived by the law of necessity, and never spent anything that could possibly be avoided. But, in truth, this is so far from being the case, that these very comfortable people will perhaps spend in the course of the year on extra luxuries for the table, extra expenses in dress, or extra indulgence of some sort, what would pay for the summer recreation twice over. It is simply a question of spending money in one way or the other for pleasure and advantage. Perhaps the home luxuries are as injurious as the jaunt would be beneficial; that is our opinion, but it is not the opinion of every one.

Some years ago, it was rather unusual for people of moderate