different and distant clime, as well as from more limited excursions; but I never set foot on British soil without feelings of pride and pleasure, on comparing it with other territories, however clothed in richer verdure-however canopied by brighter skies. In all my wanderings round this globe, (and Heaven has given my share) from the rising to the setting sun, from “ Java's palmy isle" to Iceland's dreary shores, I have never yet seen that spot on which I would fix my residence in preference to the much-abused Albion, with all its faults, its feuds, and its misfortunes! This sentiment was called forth in the candour of youth, and became confirmed with the caution of age. Time has not weakened it—experience has not altered it—prejudice has not warped it. How often "on strands remote," beneath the dazzling ardour of a tropical sun, or the Cimmerian gloom of hyperborean skies, have I aspirated to my far-distant COUNTRY, the affectionate address of the wandering poet to his beloved brother!

Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravell'd fondly turns to thee;
Still to my COUNTRY turns, with ceaseless pain,
And drags, at each remove, a length'ning chain!

THE

INFLUENCE

(MORAL, PHYSICAL, AND MEDICINAL,)

OF AN

ITALIAN CLIMATE & RESIDENCE,

IN

SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH.

SECTION THE FIRST.

PHYSICAL INFLUENCE.

THE influence of climate, not only on the complexion, but on the features and on the whole organization of man, as well as of animals and vegetables, is now unquestioned. The inhabitants of Italy, notwithstanding the unlimited admixture of Gothic, Grecian, Afric, and Asiatic blood, are almost as uniformly nationalized, in respect to colour, features, and even moral character, as the inhabitants of Spain, Greece, Egypt, Hindostan, or China. It is impossible to attribute this national stamp or impress entirely, or even principally, to race or hereditary descent in any country-and least of all in Italy, which, from the circumstance of its universal domination at one time, and complete subjugation at another, became an immense human menagerie, where specimens, nay, colonies, of every people on the face of the earth were commixed and blended together ad infinitum. Climate, then, assisted by some other physical causes, and many of a moral nature, has effected as homogeneous a people, mental and corporeal, in Italy, as in most other countries.

Italy, indeed, is very singularly situated in respect to climate. With its feet resting against the snow-clad Alps, and its head stretching towards the burning shore of Africa, it is alternately exposed to the suffocation of the sirocco, from the arid sands of Lybia, and the icy chill of the tramontane from the Alps or the Apennines. The elevated ridge of mountains that bisects the whole of Italy longitudinally, operates powerfully in modifying her climate.

Against the summits of this rugged and lofty chain of Apennines the sea-breeze that has swept the Mediterranean or even the Atlantic Ocean, on one side, or the Adriatic on the other, strikes often with great violence; but is, on the whole, impeded in its course-more especially the lower strata of air-hence the stillness of the atmosphere so remarkable at ROME and many other parts of the western plains and valleys of Italy. This stillness is by no means advantageous, in point of salubrity, to a country where deleterious exhalations are hourly issuing from the soil in the Summer season, and which are dissipated by winds and concentrated by calms. Thus, then, this Apennine ridge affords no protection from the chilling blast of the Alps, or the enervating sirocco of Africa; while it diminishes the utility, by obstructing the current of the sea-breezes, from whatever point they may blow. But the Apennines themselves, when they annually resume their caps of snow, become the source of most piercing and cutting winds, more chilling than those from the Alps, on account of their greater proximity to the plains. The Apennine, therefore, is one of the agents which produce those excessive transitions of temperature, to which the atmosphere of Italy is subjected.

The belt of ground, or series of plains and valleys, on the western side of the Apennines, is very differently circumstanced from that on the eastern. The lime-stone stratum, on the Adriatic side, is prodigiously thick; and prevents the issue of subterranean fires, in the form of volcanos. That stratum covering the primitive rock, on the western side of the Apennines, is infinitely less dense. No vestiges of volcanos have ever been

ATMOSPHERICAL VICISSITUDES.

257

found on the Adriatic declivities-while the western slope, on which all the great cities are built, presents craters in abundance. The geology of the Roman environs, and of Italy generally, shews, first, the operation of some tremendous subterranean fire that hove up the Apennines themselves ;-secondly, the operation of the sea on all the grounds lower than the Apennine ridges;-thirdly, the operation of fire again, in heaving up and disrupting the marine depositions ;-lastly, the operation of stagnant fresh waters, as evinced by the various depositions from that source. In Rome and its immediate neighbourhood, the operation of the last three causes has been clearly traced by Leopold, Von Buch, and others.

From the relative situation, then, of the Alps, the Apennines, and the sands of Africa, it may be said that almost every breeze in Italy comes over a volcano or an iceberg—and, consequently, we are alternately scorched by the one and frozen by the other.

There is a vast difference between the variability of climate in England and in Italy. In England, the changes (barometrical, thermometrical, and hygrometrical) are very frequent, but they are also very limited in their range. In Italy, it is just the reverse the transitions are not very frequent; but, when they do occur, the range is often most extensive. Now the frequency of alternations in England, and the moderate range of these alternations, are the very circumstances which render them comparatively innocuous. We have cloud and sunshine, heat and cold, winds and calms, drought and rain, twenty times in one day at home; but the British constitution becomes inured to them, and safely so, from the rapidity of their recurrence and the limitation of their range. Nay, this perpetual scene of atmospheric vicissitudes not only steels us against their effects, but proves an unceasing stimulus to activity of body and mind, and, consequently, to vigour of constitution. Hear the words -the last words, of one of the most talented philosophers of our own days.

"Of all the climates (says Sir Humphry Davy) of Europe, England seems to me most fitted for the activity of the mind, Ll

and the least suited to repose. The alterations of a climate so various and rapid, continually awake new sensations; and the changes in the sky, from dryness to moisture, from the blue etherial to cloudiness and fogs, seem to keep the nervous system in a constant state of excitement. In the changeful and tumultuous atmosphere of England, to be tranquil is a labourand employment is necessary to ward off the attacks of ennui. The English nation is pre-eminently active, and the natives of no other country follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy.

The above is fact—the following is a good deal tinctured with fancy, if not fiction.

"In the mild climate of Nice, Naples, or Sicily, where, even in Winter, it is possible to enjoy the warmth of the sunshine in the open air beneath palm trees, or amidst the evergreen groves of orange trees, covered with odorous fruit and sweet-scented leaves, mere existence is a pleasure, and even the pains of disease are sometimes forgotten amidst the balmy influence of Nature, and a series of agreeable and uninterrupted sensations invite to repose and oblivion."+

Yes! but when we come to be startled from this bed of roses by the SIROCCO or the TRAMONTANE, we find to our cost, that the longer the series of agreeable sensations, the more susceptible do we become to the deleterious influence of the enormous transition in the climate. The rapid, the frequent, but the tiny vicissitudes of an English atmosphere, are no more to be compared to the mountain blast superseding the sirocco, than a

* Consolations of Travel, 1830.

+ Ibidem.

↑ Lady Morgan, with her usual acuteness, draws, in a few words, a more accurate picture of the climate of Naples than the philosopher.

"In Rome and its surrounding deserts, every thing depicts the death of Nature; in Naples and its environs, all evinces her vigour and activity—an activity that preys on itself—a feverish vitality that consumes while it brightens. The air is fire, the soil a furnace. Sun-beams bring death! and the earth, when struck, sends up burning vapours !”