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, have even found it necessary to superadd to their fashionable follies, artificial mineral waters, with whose fount the grossest duchess may in a few days recover from the repletion of a whole season; and the minister, after the jading of a session, soon resume his wonted complacency and good humour.[2] Our aquatic taste is even carried into all our public amusements; would the festivities in celebration of the late peace have been complete without the sham fight on the Serpentine? To insure the run of a melo-drama, the New River is called in to flow over deal boards, and form a cataract; and the Vauxhall proprietors, with the aid of a _hydropyric_ exhibition, contrive to represent a naval battle. This introduction during the past season was, however, as perfectly _gratuitous_ as that of the _rain_ was uncalled for. Had they contented themselves with the latter, the scene would have been more true to nature. [2] Even the greatest hero of the age, who has won all his glory _by land_, has lately been drinking the Cheltenham _waters_. The proprietor of the well at which he drank, jocosely observed that his was "the best _well-in-town_." We carry this taste into our money-getting speculations, those freaks of the funds that leave many a man with one unfunded coat. The Thames tunnel is too amphibious an affair to be included in the number; but the ship canal project, the bridge-building mania, and the _penchant_ for working mines by steam, evidently belong to them. The fashion even extends to royalty, since our good King builds a fishing-temple, and dines on the Virginia Water; and the Duke of Clarence, as Lord High Admiral, gives a _dejeuné à la fourchette_ between Waterloo and Westminster bridges.