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.
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 the 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.