University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
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 in 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
the 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,
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 sudden and 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.

The habit of regular exercise in the open air, which
is found to be so salutary in England, is scarcely possible
in America. It is said, and said truly, of the
first, that there is no day in the year when a lady may
not ride comfortably on horseback; but with us, the
extremes of heat and cold, and the tempestuous character
of our snows and rains, totally forbid, to a delicate
person, anything like regularity in exercise. The
consequence is, that the habit rarely exists, and the
high and glowing health so common in England, and
consequent, no doubt, upon the equable character of
the climate in some measure, is with us sufficiently

rare to excite remark. “Very English-looking,” is a
common phrase, and means very healthy-looking.
Still our people last—and though I should define the
English climate as the one in which the human frame
is in the highest condition, I should say of America,
that it is the one in which you could get the most
work out of it.

Atmosphere, in England and America, is the first
of the necessaries of life. In Italy, it is the first of its
luxuries. We breathe in America, and walk abroad,
without thinking of these common acts but as a means
of arriving at happiness. In Italy, to breathe and to
walk abroad are themselves happiness. Day after day
—week after week—month after month—you wake
with the breath of flowers coming in at your open
window, and a sky of serene and unfathomable blue,
and mornings and evenings of tranquil, assured, heavenly
purity and beauty. The few weeks of the rainy
season are forgotten in these long halcyon months of
sunshine. No one can have lived in Italy a year, who
remembers anything but the sapphire sky and the
kindling and ever-seen stars. You grow insensibly to
associate the sunshine and moonlight only with the
fountain you have lived near, or the columns of the
temple you have seen from your window, for on no
objects in other lands have you seen their light so
constant.

I scarce know how to convey, in language, the effect
of the climate of Italy on mind and body. Sitting
here, indeed, in the latitude of thirty-nine, in the
middle of April, by a warm fire, and with a cold wind
whistling at the window, it is difficult to recall it, even
to the fancy. I do not know whether life is prolonged,
but it is infinitely enriched and brightened, by
the delicious atmosphere of Italy. You rise in the
morning, thanking Heaven for life and liberty to go
abroad. There is a sort of opiate in the air, which
makes idleness, that would be the vulture of Prometheus
in America, the dove of promise in Italy. It is
delicious to do nothing—delicious to stand an hour
looking at a Savoyard and his monkey—delicious to
sit away the long, silent noon, in the shade of a column,
or on the grass of a fountain—delicious to be
with a friend without the interchange of an idea—to
dabble in a book, or look into the cup of a flower.
You do not read, for you wish to enjoy the weather.
You do not visit, for you hate to enter a door while
the weather is so fine. You lie down unwillingly for
your siesta in the hot noon, for you fear you may
oversleep the first coolness of the long shadows of
sunset. The fancy, meantime, is free, and seems liberated
by the same languor that enervates the severer
faculties; and nothing seems fed by the air but
thoughts, which minister to enjoyment.

The climate of Greece is very much that of Italy.
The Mediterranean is all beloved of the sun. Life
has a value there, of which the rheumatic, shivering,
snow-breasting, blue-devilled idler of northern regions
has no shadow, even in a dream. No wonder Dante
mourned and languished for it. No wonder at the
sentiment I once heard from distinguished lips—Fuori
d'Italia tutto e esilio.

This appears like describing a Utopia; but it is
what Italy seemed to me. I have expressed myself
much more to my mind, however, in rhyme, for a
prose essay is, at best, but a cold medium.