Leaving literature, and looking at society, it is certain that the human
temper is more lively, and more unkind things are said, in a sultry than
in a temperate season. In the restless night-watches people have time to
brood over small wrongs, and wax indignant over tiny slights and
unoffered invitations. Perhaps politics, too, are apt to be more
rancorous in a "heated term." Man is very much what his liver makes him.

Hot weather vexes the unrested soul in nothing more than this, that (like
a revolution in Paris) it tempts the people to "go down into the
streets." The streets are cooler, at least, than stuffy gas-lit rooms;
and if the public would only roam them in a contemplative spirit, with
eyes turned up to the peaceful constellations, the public might fall down
an area now and then, but would not much disturb the neighbourhood. But
the 'Arry that walketh by night thinks of nothing less than admiring,
with Kant, the starry heavens and the moral nature of man. He seeks his
peers, and together in great bands they loiter or run, stopping to chaff
each other, and to jeer at the passer-by. Their satire is monotonous in
character, chiefly consisting of the words for using which the famous Mr.
Budd beat the baker. {152} Now, the sultry weather makes it absolutely
necessary to leave bedroom windows wide open, so that he who is courting
sleep has all the advantage of studying the dialogue of the slums. These
disturbances last till two in the morning in some otherwise quiet
districts near the river. When Battersea 'Arry has been "on the fly" in
Chelsea, while Chelsea 'Arry has been pursuing pleasure in Battersea, the
homeward-faring bands meet, about one in the morning, on the Embankment.
Then does Cheyne Walk hear the amoebean dialogues of strayed revellers,
and knows not whether Battersea or Chelsea best deserves the pipe, the
short black pipe, for which the rival swains compete in profanity and
slang. In music, too, does this modern Dionysiac procession rejoice, and
Kensington echoes like Cithaeron when Pan was keeping his orgies