The air of the Mediterranean, which we may call circular, has its highest note in the dry, though keen, climate of Provence and Genoa, becomes more mild as you approach Pisa, milder and less variable in Sicily, and at Algiers attains a wonderful mildness and regularity. And on your return be sure of a balmy air at Majorca and the little ports of the Rousillon, so well sheltered from the harsh north wind.
The Mediterranean commands our admiration by two characteristics; the beauty of its shores and the brilliant purity of its sky and atmosphere. Very salt, very bitter is that sea; but what a glorious blue sky is above it! It gives out by evaporation about thrice as much water as it receives from all its tributary rivers. It would become all salt, like that terrible Dead Sea, but for the lower currents, the under-tow, like that from Gibraltar, for instance, were not constantly tempering it with the waters of the Ocean.
All that I have seen of its shores are beautiful, though somewhat stern. Nothing common-place about those shores. The volcanic, the lurid bale fires of the lower earth, have everywhere made their mark upon the upper earth; those dark Plutonic rocks are never tiresome like the marshy sands of other shores. If the famous Orange woods sometimes seem somewhat monotonous, they compensate you when here and there, a sheltered spot, you find the true African vegetation, the Aloe and the Cactus, the hedge of Myrtle and Jessamine, and the wild and perfumed landes. Above, it is true, bald and frowning mountains loom, and their long offshoots run even into the very sea.
"It seemed to me," said a traveller, "that I was between two atmospheres; the air above, and the air below." He describes the varied world of plants and animals which were reflected by the crystal mirror of that deep blue sea of Sicily. I was less fortunate off Genoa, where, gazing into the depths, I saw nothing but a desert. The dry and sterile rocks, the volcanic framing of the shores, dark as midnight, or of a still sadder and more ghastly and ghostlike white, showed me nothing but antique sarcophagi—reversed churches, reminding one, at times, of the cathedrals of Florence, or the leaning tower of Pisa. Sometimes, also, I seemed to see "strange monsters of the deep." Whales? Elephants? I do not know; but of real life not a trace.
Such, however, as that beautiful sea is, it admirably nerves and hardens the dwellers on its shores, and the sailors on its bosom; it makes at once the most fiery and the most solid of races. Our giants of the North, are, perhaps, stronger, but certainly are not more enduring, and, as certainly, they do not so readily, or so safely acclimatise, as the seamen of Genoa, of Calabria, or of Greece, bronzed as they are, not by an accident of the skin, but by the permeation, the imbibation of the Sun's rays. A friend of mine, a learned physician, sends his pale patients from Paris or Lyons to take their Sun-baths in the South, and himself lies nude on the rocks, for hours together. He has only his head covered; as to all the rest of his person, he is bronzed as an African.
The really sick will go to Sicily, to Algiers, to Madeira, in search of health. But the restorative of the pale, worn populations of our great cities, is best to be found in the more varied and more strengthening climates of the country which has given to Earth its most iron humanity, its heroes by sea and by land, and in the council chamber—that truly iron race of the Columbuses, the Dorias, the Massenas,—and the Garibaldis.
Our extreme Northern ports, Dunkirk, Boulogne and Dieppe, where the winds and waters of the Channel meet, are also a great nursery of renewed life, and restored strength. That great breeze and that great sea, might recall one from the grave. You may see there perfectly incredible recoveries. Go there without any real and vital wound, and you recover on the instant. The whole human machine acts strongly; digests well, breathes freely. You need not even strive for health when there, for nature says to you, as Tully said to Atticus, Jubeo valere,—I command you to be well. The sturdy vegetation that flourishes upon the very margin of the sea, seems to rebuke our weakness. Each of the little ports which pierce our Norman coast, is swept by the nor' westerly wind, which strengthens and revives us; but grows less violent, though not less salubrious, at the mouth of the Seine, beneath the fruitful orchards of Honfleur and Trouville. The good river, sweeping away to the left, carries with it a softer and gentler air. Higher up, you meet the strong, the sometimes really terrible, sea of Granville, Saint-Maloes, and Cancale, about the best of naval schools for young folks, a school which will make the strong still stronger.
But if, on the contrary, we have to deal with some weakling, some young child, born to weakness, or some young mother, made weak by too frequent parturition, we must select some milder shelter. And such a warm and always calm shelter, you will find, without going further South, among the sleepy little isles and peninsulæ of Morbihan. These isles form a labyrinth more perplexed than that in which the English king sheltered his fair Rosamond. Entrust your own treasure to that shelter, and none shall know of her save the Druidic rocks and the handful of fishermen who inhabit those at once wild and gentle shores. Does some gentle patient ask us on what people live, in those marine solitudes? We reply, upon Fish, Fish—still Fish! It is not far from St. Gildas, where the Bretons assure you that Heloise sought her Abelard. They contrive to live there as cheaply and as well as Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday.