gradual exposure and constant habit we witness
the effects in soldiers, sailors, and Mediterranean
tourists. What they lose in delicacy of
complexion, they gain in corporeal robustness—a
good exchange for men, though less desirable for
our better halves.

The peasant women of France, who work
harder than negroes in the fields, display, like
the planet Venus, two phases of their facial disk,
which are proverbial. Of two annual fairs,
the spring one is called the fair for ugly cows
and pretty girls, because the former have starved
in their stables all the winter, while the
latter are comparatively blanched; the second,
in autumn, is the fair for handsome cows and
ugly girls, because both manifest the results of
summer pasturage and of summer sunshine. In
point of health, and leaving skin-deep beauty out
of the question, the girls have improved as much
as the cows. They are hale, which means, in
English, " strong, healthy, vigorous," both the
idea and the word being derived from the French
"hâle," sunburnt, swarthy. Dark, but comely,
they might sit as models for Parnel's famous
Nut-brown Maid.

Heat and light agree with us; when the
former especially is deficient, we must increase
it by artificial means, by fire and clothing.
Arcadian savages who were "all face" might
reside with comfort in the climate of Otaheite;
but the primitive Red Indian, when frost set in,
must have bemoaned his fate as a featherless
biped, with no squire in his parish to distribute
flannel to the poor. We see how want of
sunlight tells on those who are hidden from day's
garish eye—on miners, actors, night- house-keepers,
and on Londoners generally. The true
London complexion is scarcely mistakable; and
the Londoner makes his escape into the circumjacent
flood of light as often as his affairs allow
him, returning proud of his sunburnt face and
hands. On the other hand, the Mediterranean
shores exhibit the wondrous effects of the solar
beam, which admirably tempers the human race,
conferring that dry and lean strength which
offers the most obstinate resistance to fatigue.
The Herculeses of the north are stronger perhaps
for a single effort, but they are less robust, less
generally acclimatable than Provençal, Genoese,
or Greek sailors, who are bronzed and coppered
until they seem almost turned into metal. Their
rich colouring is not an accident of the epidermis,
but a deep absorption of sunshine and life.
A wise physician, lauded by Michelet, used to
send his pale-faced patients from Paris and
Lyons to take sun-baths on the Mediterranean
coast. He supported precept by example,
stretching himself on a rock for hours in the
sunshine, with his head alone protected by
clothing. At the end of the course, his skin
acquired a fine deep-toned African tint. We
ought to have been told how he managed to
exorcise the flies.

Contrasting with this bronzing process is Dr
Johnson's Midsummer Wish, which, coming froim
so grave a philosopher, sounds luxurious and
almost naughty:

Lay me where o'er the verdant ground
    Her living carpet Nature spreads;
Where the green bower, with roses crown'd
   In showers its fragrant foliage sheds.
Improve the peaceful hour with wine,
   Let music die along the grove;
Around the bowl let myrtles twine,
   And every strain be tun'd to love.

Suppose we interrupt the Doctor's reverie
with a smart sprinkling of summer dust—of
dust such as we have in England, shingley dust
violently torn up by the mechanical force of the
wind a quarter of an hour after a heavy shower,
smiting you as though a handful of small-shot
had been thrown in your face. For fine dust,
for light inpalpable dust, which lies quietly
reposing until some disturbing cause (as a
footstep or a carriage-wheel) sets it flying, you must
go to countries which have summers with two
three rainless months. The plains of
Lombardy are able to supply specimens of
finely-divided earth, which are by no means to be
despised even by wearers of Epsom-race veils.
Nor were gentlemen's veils invented on the
Epsom road. The streets of Peking, an old
geographer tells us, are not paved, and the
inhabitants and others are obliged to wear veils
during summer, or they would be blinded by
the dust. The Touaregs, from the Great Sahara,
now being entertained by our Gallic neighbours,
habitually wear a black veil, which covers their
eyes like a visor, and their nose and mouth like
a mask. This veil is no article of fancy
costume, but a matter of necessity to protect the
eyes from the reverberation of the solar rays and
the organs of respiration from immediate
contact with hot dry air and burning desert dust.

Dust, nevertheless, has its uses as a fertiliser
sprinkled over the land by the wind. The dust
shot out by Vesuvius, and falling in considerable
quantities over many a square league, is believed
to be one of the causes of the great fertility of that
luxuriant district. This, however, is not
necessarily summer dust: volcanoes holding
themselves independent of times and seasons.
Summer dust has been most cleverly utilised by
meteorologists, and made to betray where
certain breezes come from. The red dust which
falls abundantly out at sea, in the
Mediterranean and in the vicinity of the Cape de
Verd Islands, has been proved to belong to
South America; placing hereby in the hands of
naturalists a clue, which, attenuated and
gossamer like though it be, is nevertheless palpable
and strong enough to guide them, through the
circuits of the winds, even unto the chambers of
the south.

A prophet, who puts faith in falling stars,
and has observed them for twenty years past,
predicts that '62 will be warm and dry. Every
weather-wise body has his own indicative symptoms
to go by. When June sets in and
continues, with showery weather and south-west
winds, it is a bad sign for July and August.
This was the case in 1860, when people travelled
indefinitely southward, to discover where fine
weather was to be found: defying the rigour of