s
deep-bosomed maids as you will in England; so you will in Virginia,
Kentucky, Missouri, and Wisconsin, which, with a portion of Ohio, are
the most healthy states in the Union. There is another proof, and a
positive one, that the women are affected by 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 recognised upon her return home; showing
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
Americans 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; 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 th