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advantages; but my own attention has been specially drawn to Natal, and from all I have heard and read, Natal really gives a brilliant hope of restoration to all but hopeless consumptive cases. If a rich man meets a poor man who has the sign of incipient consumption, he cannot do better than urge him to emigrate, and put him in the way of it.

But I will now say a few words respecting our ordinary English invalids, which shall at least have the merit of plainness and brevity, and of being based on some experience in the course of a peripatetic career. For a very simple, or for a very advanced case, the southern English climate is preferable to a foreign climate; and, moreover, there are many persons who have no choice, but must needs remain in England. The English climate is more equable than the Mediterranean-that is to say, there is not that startling difference between the temperature of the day and night; we have also the abundant ozone of the oceanic climate, and a contiguity to the Gulf Stream. However, the Mediterranean has advantages which at least fully counterbalance this latter consideration. If there is not much the matter, it is hardly worth while going abroad in search of what may be obtained close at hand; and in a very decided case, the loss of English comforts and associations is hardly atoned for by a mitigated climate. More hopeful patients are sent, I imagine, by the

faculty, to the more bracing health resorts, such as St. Leonards and Bournemouth (would not Ilfracombe and Tenby come under this head ?), and other cases to the extremely mild air of Torquay or Penzance. As a rule, the farther west you go the more thorough is the change, the more striking the scenery, the more diversified the surroundings; and all this is of great importance in what may be called the hygienics of the mind. Torquay calls itself the queen of watering-places; but it has hardly ever been my fortune to be in any watering-place that did not arrogate to itself some such royal title. It is essentially the watering-place for carriage invalids, being very expensive, and all up and down hill. Really to enjoy Torquay you ought to keep your carriage. So far as I have been able to compare them, Penzance appears to me to be preferable, when the preliminary difficulty of the long journey is once overcome. has lately been a sumptuous mass of public buildings erected at Penzance, and without doing injustice to the intellectual society of Torquay, which in some respects is peculiarly affluent, I think the balance of mental resources rests with Penzance. As a bright, bracing place, easy of access from town, I have always looked with peculiar favour on St. Leonards.

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Then, as for the Continent; the choice of a locality admits of much discussion, and requires a few cautionary words. It is not wise to mix up together the

search after health and the search after pleasure. Nice and Rome are no doubt very charming places, and have high climatic reputations; although at Nice the air certainly does strike very cold through the Alpine gorge, and the mistral is peculiarly abominable; and at Rome, also, the air is frequently chill enough, and the malaria is year by year tightening its folds around the city. The society at Nice is very good, and the highest society in the world is to be found at Rome; but the claims of society are often in unhealthy antagonism with the claims of health. To brave the night air, to sit in long cold galleries, to spend many hours in the heated atmosphere of crowded salons, is quite inconsistent with the pursuit of health. It is best to be out of the way of harm and temptation, and in other localities, more retired, which have better claims as health resorts. Both at home and abroad there are places whose reputations are rapidly waning, and others, whose reputation is rapidly advancing; and yet others where the reputation has been made and lost, and is rapidly making itself again. There appear to be substantial reasons why Madeira has lost that superiority of climate which medical opinion so long attached to her. The climate itself appears to have undergone a change, in some measure, from the system of irrigation that has been introduced since the sugar-cane has been substituted for the failing vines. Last year the

committee of the Brompton Hospital sent out a number of selected patients to Madeira, but the results obtained were of a decidedly unsatisfactory kind. The varying reputation of a locality is generally arbitrary, depending on medical caprice or the current of fashion. It is noticeable that when you are at some celebrated watering-place, you will generally hear of some neighbouring locality whose climatic advantages are said to exceed those of the watering-place itself. At Torquay you hear of Salcombe, and at Worthing you hear of Lancing, and at Penzance you hear of Flushing. Avignon, in which Mr. John Stuart Mill so delighted, is probably as good as Nice; and why should not Montpellier fully win back that bygone reputation which once gave its name to most of the salubrious situations in town and country?

After all that has been said of Spain and Sicily, Egypt and Algiers (I should feel inclined myself to put in a claim for Tripoli), the medical men most numerously fall back upon the Riviera. I should here mention a little work on the Climate of the South of France, which was issued by the son of the late eminent physician, Dr. C. I. B. Williams, and which is understood to embody the experience and conviction of that eminent authority in chest cases. It is very pleasantly and most intelligibly written, and at this season of the year is peculiarly opportune. An important consideration arises for

my invalid friend whether he requires a sedative or excitant climate. The climate of the South of France varies very remarkably in this respect, the climate of Nice being extraordinarily excitant, and that of Pau being extraordinarily sedative, and so being best adapted, respectively, for non-inflammatory and inflammatory cases. The medical men, who are of course cautious in recommending a climate which may turn out to be adverse, are fond of recommending Cannes or Hyères, as being free from this extreme character; and when you are there you may make up your mind whether you will go farther into la petite Afrique, or turn aside from the Alps to the Pyrenees.

Most delightful is it to sojourn in that region which recalls Goethe's song of Mignon; the palm, and orange, and citron; the mountain path descending on the plain, and the statued terraces. While the weaklings at home are swathed in innumerable wraps, depending on warm-water pipes for softened air, and warm-water bottles for one's poor feet, you entirely discard the use of the greatcoat in your walks; you have songs and flowers and perfumes as of an unceasing summer; you watch the lizard basking in the sun, and, lizard-like, you luxuriate in that genial heat, which pours down in a flood of radiance from the sun, unstained, unintercepted by those clouds and vapours which in England rob us of half our light and

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