ATMOSPHERICAL VICISSITUDES. 259 squall at Spithead can be likened to a typhoon in the Indian ocean. It is to be remembered that the usual Summer temperature of Italy approaches very near to that of the West Indies, without the advantage of the regular land and sea-breezes of tropical countries bordering on the ocean. This is a peculiarity which the cold of the neighbouring Alps, so often poured down on the fervid vales of Italy, renders a most dangerous anomaly among the climates of the earth. Sir Humphry Davy travelled with the curiosity of a philosopher, rather than with the discrimination of a physician, or the sensitiveness of an invalid. Let us hear what a clergyman of erudition, talents, and keen perception-himself a valetudinarian, says of the "balmy influence " of Italian skies. "February 11th. The weather is beautiful (says Mr. Matthews) and as warm as a June day in England. We sit at breakfast without a fire, on a marble floor-with the casements open-enjoying the mild breeze. "February 12th. Oh this land of Zephyrs! Yesterday was warm as July ;-to-day we are shivering with a bleak easterly wind, and an English black frost. Naples is one of the worst climates in Europe for complaints of the chest. Whatever we may think of sea-air in England, the effect is very different here. The sea-breeze in Devonshire is mild and soft-here it is keen and piercing.' "March 14th. ÆGRI SOMNIA-if a man be tired of the slow lingering progress of consumption, let him repair to Naples; and the denouement will be much more rapid. The Sirocco wind, which has been blowing for six days, continues with the same violence. The effects of this south-east blast, fraught with all the plagues of the deserts of Africa, are immediately felt in that leaden oppressive dejection of spirits, which is the most intolerable of diseases. This must surely be the "plumbeus Auster" of Horace."* * Diary of an Invalid. The Sirocco did not escape the observation of If, thermometrically speaking, we say that the Summer heat of the Italian valleys approaches the temperature of the tropics* -while the tramontane blast of Winter depresses the mercury as much as a Caledonian North-easter-we convey a very inadequate idea of the feelings and the physical effects occasioned by these opposite conditions of the atmosphere in Italy. I have alluded to this subject, under the head of Naples, and also on the journey from Genoa to Nice. The thermometer, in fact, is no index or criterion of our feelings under the influence of the SIROCCO and TRAMONTANE. The former appears to suspend, exhaust, or paralyze the nervous energy of the body, and the sensorial vigour of the mind; both of which fall prostrate beneath the flood of enervating steam engendered by the aerial current sweeping over burning sands and evaporating seas. The latter, or tramontane, comes down from the Alps or Apennines, with such a voracious appetite for caloric, that it sucks the vital heat from every pore-shrivels up the surface of the body-impels the tide of the circulation, with great violence, upon the internal organs-and endangers the lungs or whatever other structure happens to be weakest in the living machine. We have seen in the quotation from Mr. Matthews-that a SIROCCO blew for six days uninterruptedly at Naples, and that in the month of March. What must be the consequence of a chilling Tramontane, after a relaxing vapour-bath of six days and nights' duration? In the same month, and in the same page, we find the following astounding memorandum. "Seized with an acute pain in my side. Decided pleurisy. Summoned an English surgeon. High fever. Copious bleeding. Owe my life, under Heaven, to the lancet. I find pleurisy is the endemic of Naples."+ Homer, who speaks of Vapours blown by Auster's sultry breath, "Pregnant with plagues, and shedding seeds of death." * Dr. Clark states the mean temperature of the Mediterranean generally, in the month of August at 80° Fahrenheit, which is very little less than the mean annual temperature of the Indian ocean. ↑ Diary of an Invalid, p. 205. ATMOSPHERICAL VICISSITUDES. 261 The very circumstance, in short, which forms the charm, the attraction, the theme of praise in the Italian climate, is that which renders it dangerous, because deceitful-namely, the long intervals of fine weather between vicissitudes of great magnitude. This is the bane of Italy, whose brilliant suns and balmy zephyrs flatter only to betray. They first enervate the constitution; and, when the body is ripe for the impression of the TRAMONTANE, that ruthless blast descends from the mountains on its hapless victim, more fierce and destructive than the outlawed bandit on the unsuspecting traveller! Italy boasts much of the dryness of her climate. In some places, as at Pisa, there falls as much rain as in Cornwall. In Rome, about one-third less of rain falls than at Penzance, and the number of rainy days is one-third less-being about 117 in the year. This is a poor counterbalance for the steam of the Sirocco, and the oppressive stillness of the Roman air. The fogs of England and its cloudy skies furnish constant themes of querulous complaint; but they would be rich treats in Italy, as defences against the torrents of liquid fire that pour down on her vales from a nearly vertical sun in Summer. As rains fall in Italy more seldom than in England, they make up for this infrequency, by precipitating themselves in cataracts, that form mountain torrents which overflow their banks, flood the plains, and saturate every inch of ground with humidity. The deluge over, a powerful sun bursts forth, and rapidly exhales into the air, not only the aqueous vapour from the soil, but the miasmata generated by the decomposition of all the vegetable and animal substances which the rains have destroyed, the floods carried down from the mountains, or the gutters swept out of the streets. If these exhalations rise into the air perfumed with the aroma of ten thousand odoriferous shrubs, breathing their balmy influence over the face of a smiling landscape, they are not the less, but the more dangerous on that account. Northern strangers, and more especially INVALIDs, unaccustomed to an azure sky and a genial atmosphere in the depth of Winter, sally forth to enjoy the glorious sunshine or resplendent moonlight of Italy—and, like the Grecian shepherds— -Exulting in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the cheerful light! But they have, too often, reason to curse, in the sequel, the seductive climate of this classic soil, which mingles the poisonous miasma with the refreshing breeze, and thus conveys the germ of future maladies on the wings of fragrant Zephyrs.* And now having glanced rapidly at the physical features of the climate of Italy, it is natural to inquire what are its general effects on the inhabitants of that renowned territory? The records of antiquity afford scanty materials for estimating the influence of climate on the ancient Romans. And if these records were more complete, they would probably throw but little light on the present inquiry. The climate of Italy has undergone nearly as great a revolution as the political power or moral circumstances of its inhabitants, since the commencement of the Christian æra. In the time of OVID, the Black Sea, on whose dreary shores the effeminate poet ended his days in hopeless, and rather unmanly exile, was sometimes locked up in ice for years in succession. PLINY, the younger, informs us that he was unable to raise the olive and myrtle, in the open air, at his country seat in Tuscany, where they now flourish so luxuriantly. The poets are full of descriptions of the frozen Tiber, and the cold of Italy, during Winter. The cold is still felt; but the ice and snow of the plains and rivers have nearly disappeared. The land itself has undergone great revolutions by earthquakes and subterranean fires. The eastern, or Adriatic side of Italy appears to have become elevated, and the western shore de * "This must suffice for the pure, the bright, the fragrant, the classical air of Italy, the Paradise of Europe. To such a pest-house are its blue skies the canopy-and where its bright sun holds out the promise of life and joy, it is but to inflict misery and death. To him who knows what this land is, the sweetest breeze of Summer is attended by an unavoidable sense of fear-and he who, in the language of the poets, wooes the balmy Zephyr of the evening, finds death in its blandishments."-Macculloch. COMPARATIVE LONGEVITY IN ITALY AND ENGLAND. 263 pressed, within the last 2000 years. RAVENNA, which was once the Portsmouth of Italy, is now some miles from the sea. The PONTINE MARSHES, which can hardly keep their heads above water at present, (and which, it is to be hoped, will soon be covered by the Mediterranean wave) were once the seat of some half a hundred cities or towns!! These revolutions have been ridiculously attributed to the encroachment or retrocession of the ocean. Foolish hypothesis! Water will always preserve its level, however land may rise or sink. The earliest authority, on the subject of longevity, among the Romans, is ULPIANUS, secretary and minister of Alexander Severus. According to him, a register was kept of the age, sex, diseases, and death of the RoMAN CITIZENS from the time of Servius Tullius to Justinian, comprehending a period of ten consecutive centuries. The mortality of the great mass of the population, however, consisting of slaves, &c. is left out of sight—and, consequently, Ulpianus's tables relate to what may be termed picked lives. Το "From observations formed on 1000 years, the expectation, or mean term of Roman life, has been fixed at thirty years. make a just comparison of the value of life in Rome and in England, we must select subjects in England similarly circumstanced, of a condition relatively easy: and the result discloses an extension of life remarkably in cur favour. Mr. Finlayson has ascertained, from very extensive observation, on the decrement of life prevailing among the nominees of the tontines, and other life annuities granted by authority of Parliament, during the last forty years, that the expectation of life is above fifty years for persons thus situated, which affords our easy classes a superiority of twenty years above the Roman citizen. The expectation of life for the whole mass of Britain is at least one in forty-five, which affords to all our classes a superiority of fifteen years above even the easy classes of the Romans."* * Hawkins's Statistics, p. 7. It appears, from the same author, that the probability of life, for the whole |