to us,—that England has WEATHER, but no
CLIMATE,—meaning that every imaginable
change is at all times possible, and that for
four weeks of June sun and wind, we often
are requited with a December that even
Naples might envy. It may be set down as
certain, that, except in a few favoured spots
along the shores of the Mediterranean and in
Sicily, our winters are milder than those of
the Continent. A Paris winter is a vile
compound of cold, slush, damp, fog, and foul
smells. A Brussels one is all the preceding,
plus sleet and storm. A German winter is an
affair of stoves, double windows, fur mantles,
and foot-warmers, frozen fountains, and no
mail every second or third day. Italy has a
dozen climates. Milan, all rain and wind.
Turin, both, in diminished degree. Florence
alternates between an Irish January and a
West Indian tornado. With the Sirocco,
come fog, mud, and neuralgia; with the
Tramontano wind you have falling pottery and
pleurisies. Rome is Ireland, with a Pontine
fever; and Naples is all that sun and wind
can make it.

The autumns are uniformly fine abroad,
finer and less changeable than in England.
As for spring, it only exists in "Thomson's
Seasons." The continental summers are
almost unexceptionabiy good. In mountain
districts there are certain periodical rains, but
they rarely last long, or cause much
inconvenience. An English invalid has few valid
reasons for leaving his own shores, save such
as the change of scene and the novelty of
travel suggest. Pisa, it is true, offers some
advantages to the weak-chested; but then
the whole available extent of Pisa is the quay
along the Arno. Away from this, you
encounter cutting winds and cold blasts, and all
the rigours of a northern winter. There are a
few secluded nooks along the Mediterranean,
such as Nestre and Spezzia, which combine the
advantages of sea-air with all the luxuriance
of a tropical vegetation. Of these we mean to
speak hereafter.

After all, however, if climate be any object,
we must seek it south of the Alps. The
winters of France and Germany, severe and
tedious as they are, are nothing to the transition
stages that precede and follow them. It
is those tiresome months of late autumn and
early spring,—those tadpole seasons of
undeveloped proportions, slush, rain, and cold, and
mud and sleet, banging doors, and blowing
noses,—these are the worst of all.
Notwithstanding all these things—in spite of the
inconvenience of the passport system, the police
and the Custom-house—you will come abroad.
There may be fifty reasons for it. Your
neighbours—the Teddingtons—have done it,
and their daughters have all married counts
and marquises; you are hard-worked and
wearied, and you long for the repose of a
vacation; you have gone too fast; you have
burned your fingers with shares in the
Behring Straits Junction; and you have laid out
your spare capital in an Irish mortgage.
Economy for a while is indispensable, and it
must be practised abroad.

The unqualified opinion of every Englishman
is, that the whole Continent is miserably
poor; that to make a decent appearance in
the streets or at the cafés, all foreigners, from
Norway to Naples, starve at home, and play
hot hands, or go to bed, to make up for want
of a fire. Milord therefore thinks that even
his reduced income of one thousand per annum
will make him a "personage" abroad, and in
this pleasant delusion he starts on his travels.
As the French say, "C'est une illusion comme
une autre." What is the fact ? He finds that
Brussels is as dear as Leamington. The Rhine
towns are nests of cheating and imposition;
the smaller central cities of Germany are
unprovided with every requisite he is used to,
and insupportably dull besides; and he takes
refuge at last in Munich or Vienna, or he
crosses the Alps into Italy.

All the actual material of life abroad is very
little cheaper than in England, and considerably
dearer than in most parts of Scotland
and Ireland. Neither your house nor your
man-servant nor maid-servant cost you less.
Your wine, indeed, does, and so do all the
details of education. But if these be cheaper,
they are inferior also. The light St. Estephe,
that you dignify by the name of Claret, sets
your teeth on edge; and the thin Klingenberger
is only vinegar in a decanter. And as
to education, with all the vices of our school
system at home, some men of information are
occasionally to be found in public life and
professions, and we are not disgraced by
hearing a great minister talk of Ancona as in
the Mediterranean! Continental languages
and music are the staples of foreign education.
As to the former, they are learned badly,
because categorically; and all the advantages
of correct accent are counterbalanced by want
of grammatical study. Music, indeed, is
acquired in a better and more rational method,
particularly in Germany. As to classical
knowledge and the mass of general information
which our schools and colleges teach,
foreign educational establishments are lamentably
deficient. The blunders in history,
geography, and natural science, which every one
has witnessed in foreign society—and rarely
heard in England—the very shamelessness of
the avowals of ignorance on common topics,
—attest of how little consequence such
confessions are. We remember well ourselves
hearing a very distinguished foreigner
confound "Berlin" with "Dublin" for half an
hour together; and, when mildly admonished
of his mistake, merely replied, "C'est égal;  c'est
toujours la même chose;" (it is all one; it is
just the same thing); while not many days
ago we listened with considerable interest to
an animated description of the late Sicilian
revolt, and its secret history, from the lips of
a Lombard gentleman—his narrative, as he
went along, being corroborated, and. indeed,