“Some people have no souls,” responded the gentleman.
After this verdict, I thought the best thing I could do was to take care of my body, and I very carefully backed down the old staircase, which is probably more hazardous now than in the days when it was used to admit damsels and haunches of venison to the reverend fathers.
I reached the bottom in safety, and informed my friends that they had no souls, but they manifested the usual unconcern on the subject, and strolled away through the echoing arches, in search of new points of view and fresh wild-flowers. “Commend me at least,” I thought, as I followed on, “to those whose pulses can be quickened even by a cold pie and a glass of champagne. Sadness and envy are sown thickly enough by the wayside.”
We were embarked once more by the middle of the afternoon, and with a head wind, but smooth water and cool temperature, beat back to Ryde. If the young lady and her lover have forgiven or forgotten us, and the ghosts of Netley, frocked or petticoated, have taken no umbrage, I have not done amiss in marking the day with a stone of the purest white. How much more sensible is a party like this in the open air, and at healthy hours, than the untimely and ceremonious civilities usually paid to strangers. If the world would mend by moralising, however, we should have had a Utopia long ago.
COMPARISON OF THE CLIMATE OF
EUROPE AND AMERICA.
One of Hazlitt’s nail-driving remarks is to the effect that he should like very well to pass the whole of his life in travelling, if he could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterward at home. How far action is necessary to happiness, and how far repose—how far the appetite for novelty and adventure will drive, and how far the attractions of home and domestic comfort will recall us—in short, what are the precise exactions of the antagonist principles in our bosoms of curiosity and sloth, energy and sufferance, hope and memory—are questions which each one must settle for himself, and which none can settle but he who has passed his life in the eternal and fruitless search after the happiest place, climate, and station.
Contentment depends upon many things within our own control, but, with a certain education it depends partly upon things beyond it. To persons delicately constituted or delicately brought up, and to all idle persons, the principal ingredient of the cup of enjoyment is climate; and Providence, that consults “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” has made the poor and the roughly-nurtured independent of the changes of the wind. Those who have the misfortune to be delicate as well as poor—those, particularly, for whom there is no hope but in a change of clime, but whom pitiless poverty compels to languish in vain after the reviving south, are happily few; but they have thus much more than their share of human calamity.
In throwing together my recollections of the climates with which I have become acquainted in other lands, I am aware that there is a greater difference of opinion on this subject than on most others. A man who has agreeable society about him in Montreal, but who was without friends in Florence, would be very likely to bring the climate in for its share of the difference, and prefer Canada to Italy; and health and circumstances of all kinds affect, in no slight degree, our susceptibility to skies and atmosphere. But it is sometimes interesting to know the impressions of others, even though they agree not with our own; and I will only say of mine on this subject, that they are so far likely to be fair, as I have been blessed with the same perfect health in all countries, and have been happy alike in every latitude and season.
It is almost a matter of course to decry the climate of England. The English writers themselves talk of suicidal months; and it is the only country where part of the livery of a mounted groom is his master’s great-coat strapped about his waist. It is certainly a damp climate, and the sun shines less in England than in most other countries. But to persons of full habit this moisture in the air is extremely agreeable; and the high condition of all animals in England, from man downward, proves its healthfulness. A stranger who has been accustomed to a brighter sky, will, at first, find a gloom in the gray light so characteristic of an English atmosphere; but this soon wears off, and he finds a compensation, as far as the eye is concerned, in the exquisite softness of the verdure, and the deep and enduring brightness of the foliage. The effect of this moisture on the skin is singularly grateful. The pores become accustomed to a healthy action, which is unknown in other countries; and the bloom by which an English complexion is known all over the world is the index of an activity in this important part of the system, which, when first experienced, is almost like a new sensation. The transition to a dry climate, such as ours, deteriorates the condition and quality of the skin, and produces a feeling, if I may so express it, like that of being glazed. It is a common remark in England that an officer’s wife and daughters follow his regiment to Canada at the expense of their complexions; and it is a well-known fact that the bloom of female beauty is, in our country, painfully evanescent.
The climate of America is, in many points, very different from that of France and Great Britain. In the middle and northern states, it is a dry, invigorating, and bracing climate, in which a strong man may do more work than in almost any other, and which makes continual exercise, or occupation of some sort, absolutely necessary. With the exception of the “Indian summer,” and here and there a day scattered through the spring and the hot months, there is no weather tempered so finely, that one would think of passing the day in merely enjoying it, and life is passed, by those who have the misfortune to be idle, in continual and active dread of the elements. The cold is so acrid, and the heat so sultry, and the changes from one to the other are so violent, that no enjoyment can be depended upon out-of-doors, and no system of clothing or protection is good for a day together. He who has full occupation for head and hand (as by far the greatest majority of our countrymen have) may live as long in America as in any portion of the globe—vide the bills of mortality. He whose spirits lean upon the temperature of the wind, or whose nerves require a genial and constant atmosphere, may find more favorable climes; and the habits and delicate constitutions of scholars and people of sedentary pursuits generally, in the United States, prove the truth of the observation.