When London nights are intolerable, people think with longing of the cool, fragrant country, of the jasmine-muffled lattices, and the groups beneath the dreaming evening star.  One dreams of coffee after dinner in the open air, as described in “In Memoriam;” one longs for the cool, the hush, the quiet.  But try the country on a July night.  First you have trouble with all the great, big, hairy, leathery moths and bats which fly in at the jasmine-muffled lattice, and endeavour to put out your candle.  You blow the candle out, and then a bluebottle fly in good voice comes out too, and is accompanied by very fair imitations of mosquitoes.  Probably they are only gnats, but in blowing their terrible little trumpets they are of the mosquito kind.  Next the fact dawns on you that the church clock in the neighbouring spire strikes the quarters, and you know that you cannot fall asleep before the chime wakes you up again, with its warning, “Another quarter gone.”  The cocks come forth and crow about four; the hens proclaim to a drowsy world that they have fulfilled the duties of maternity.  All through the ambrosial night three cows, in the meadow under your windows, have been lamenting the loss of their calves.  Of all terrible notes, the “routing” of a bereaved, or amorous, or homesick cow is the most disturbing.  It carries for miles, and keeps all who hear it—­all town-bred folk, at least—­far from the land of Nod.  At dawn the song-birds begin, and hold you awake, as they disturbed Rufinus long ago; but the odds are that they do not inspire you, like Rufinus, with the desire to write poetry.  The short and simple language of profanity is more likely to come unbidden to the wakeful lips.  Thus, as John Leech found out, the country in July is almost as dreadful at night as the town.  Nay, thanks to the cow, we think the country may bear away the prize for all that is uncomfortable, all that is hostile to sleep and the Muses.  Yet rustics always sleep very well, and no more mind the noise of cocks, sparrows, cows, dogs, and ducks than the owner of a town-bred dog minds when his faithful hound drives a whole street beyond their patience.  It is a matter of sound health and untaxed brains.  If we always gave our minds a rest, none of us would dread the noises of the nights of summer.

ON HYPOCHONDRIACS.

A nice state we are in, according to the Medical Times.  If the secrets of our “casebooks”—­that is, we suppose, our medical dossiers, doctors’ records of the condition of their patients—­could be revealed, it would be shown that many clever people have a fancy skeleton in their cupboards.  By a fancy skeleton we mean, not some dismal secret of crime or shame, but a melancholy and apprehensiveness without any ground in outward facts.  With the real skeleton doctors have nothing to do.  He rather belongs to the province of Scotland Yard.  If a man has compromised himself in some way, if