If there be a Month the aspect of which is less amiable, and its manners
and habits less prepossessing, than those of all the rest (which I am
loath to admit), that month is March. The burning heats of midsummer
(when they shall come to us at the prophetic call of the Quarterly
Reviewers--which they never will) we shall find no difficulty in
bearing; and the frosts and snows of December and January are as
welcome, to those who know their value, as the flowers in May. Nay--the
so much vituperated fogs of November I by no means set my face against;
on the contrary, I have a kind of appetite for them, both corporeal and
mental; as I shall prove, and endeavour to justify in its due place.
In fact, and by the by, November is a month that has not been fairly
dealt by; and, for my part, I think it should by no means have been
fixed upon as that which is _par excellence_ the month best adapted to
hang and drown oneself in;--seeing that, to a wise man, _that_ should
never be an affair of atmosphere. But if a month must be set apart for
such a proces, (on the same principle which determines that we are bound
to _begin_ our worldly concerns on a particular day--viz. Saturday--and
would therefore, by parity of reasoning, call upon us to end them with a
similar view to times and seasons), let that month be henceforth March;
for it has, at this present writing, no one characteristic by which to
designate it,--being neither Spring, Summer, Autumn, nor Winter, but
only March.