the climate and not through any fault of their own, which is, that if you transplant a delicate American girl to England, she will in a year or two become so robust and healthy as not to be recognized upon her return home; shewing that the even temperature of our damp climate is, from the capability of constant exercise, more conducive to health, than the sunny, yet variable atmosphere of America.

The Americans are fond of their climate, and consider it, as they do every thing in America, as the very best in the world. They are, as I have said before, most happy in their delusions. But if the climate be not a healthy one, it is certainly a beautiful climate to the eye; the sky is so clear, the air so dry, the tints of the foliage so inexpressibly beautiful in the autumn and early winter months: and at night, the stars are so brilliant, hundreds being visible with the naked

eye which are not to be seen by us, that I am not surprised at the American praising the beauty of their climate. The sun is terrific in his heat,

it is true, but still one cannot help feeling the want of it, when in England, he will disdain to shine for weeks. Since my return to this country, the English reader can hardly form an idea of how much I have longed for the sun. After having sojourned for nearly two years in America, the sight of it has to me almost amounted to a necessity, and I am not therefore at all astonished at an American finding fault with the climate of England; but nevertheless, our climate, although unprepossessing to the eye, and depressive to the animal spirits, is much more healthy than the exciting and changeable atmosphere, although beautiful in appearance, which they breathe in the United States.

One of the first points to which I directed my attention on my arrival in America, was to the diseases most prevalent. In the eastern States, as may be supposed, they have a great deal of consumption; in the western, the complaint is hardly known: but the general nature of the American diseases are neuralgic, or those

which affect the nerves, and which are common to almost all the Union. Ophthalmia, particularly the disease of the ophthalmic nerve, is very common in the eastern States. The medical men told me that there were annually more diseases of the eye in New York city alone, than perhaps all over Europe. How far this may be correct I cannot say ; but this I can assert, that I never had any complaint in my eyes until I arrived in America, and during a stay of eighteen months, I was three times very severely afflicted. The oculist who attended me, asserted that he had seven hundred patients.

The tic doloureux is another common complaint throughout America,—indeed so common is it, that I should say that one out of ten suffers from it, more or less; the majority, how

ever, are women.

I saw more cases of delirium tremens in America, than I ever heard of before. In fact, the climate is one of extreme excitement. I had not been a week in the country before I dis

covered how impossible it was for a foreigner to drink as much wine or spirits as he could in England, and I believe that thousands of emigrants have been carried off by making no alteration in their habits upon their arrival.*

The winters in Wisconsin, Ioway, Missouri, and Upper Canada, are dry and healthy, enabling the inhabitants to take any quantity of exercise, and I found that the people looked forward to their winters with pleasure, longing for the heat of the summer to abate.

Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and a portion of Ohio, are very unhealthy in the autumns from the want of drainage; the bilious congestive fever, ague, and dysentery, carrying off large numbers. Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and the eastern portions of Tennessee, are comparatively healthy. South Carolina, and all the

*

* Vermont, New Hampshire, the interior portion of the State of New York, and all the portions of the other States which abut on the great lakes, are healthy, owing to the dryness of the atmosphere being softened down by the proximity of such large bodies of water.

other southern States, are, as it is well known, visited by the yellow fever, and the people migrate every fall to the northward, not only to avoid the contagion, but to renovate their general health, which suffers from the continual demand upon their energies, the western and southern country being even more exciting than the cast. There is a fiery disposition in the Southerners which is very remarkable; they are much more easily excited than even the Spaniard or Italian, and their feelings are more violent and unrestrainable, as I shall hereafter shew. That this is the effect of climate I shall now attempt to prove by one or two circumstances, out of the many which fell under my observation. It is impossible to imagine a greater difference in character than exists between the hot-blooded Southerner, and the cold calculating Yankee of the eastern States. I have already said that there is a continual stream of emigration from the eastern States to the southward and westward, the farmers of the eastern