and refreshment after a
sultry summer or a _muggy_ rainy season.

An Englishman, however, must always prefer the keener but more wholesome
frigidity of his own clime. There, the external gloom and bleakness of a
severe winter day enhance our in-door comforts, and we do not miss sunny
skies when greeted with sunny looks. If we then see no blooming flowers,
we see blooming faces. But as we have few domestic enjoyments in this
country--no social snugness,--no sweet seclusion--and as our houses are
as open as bird-cages,--and as we almost live in public and in the open
air--we have little comfort when compelled, with an enfeebled frame and
a morbidly sensitive cuticle, to remain at home on what an Anglo-Indian
Invalid calls a cold day, with an easterly wind whistling through every
room.[049] In our dear native country each season has its peculiar moral
or physical attractions. It is not easy to say which is the most
agreeable--its summer or its winter. Perhaps I must decide in favor of
the first. The memory of many a smiling summer day still flashes upon my
soul. If the whole of human life were like a fine English day in June,
we should cease to wish for "another and a better world." It is often
from dawn to sunset one revel of delight. How pleasantly, from the first
break of day, have I lain wide awake and traced the approach of the
breakfast hour by the increasing notes of birds and the advancing
sun-light on my curtains! A summer feeling, at such a time, would make my
heart dance within me, as I thought of the long, cheerful day to be
enjoyed, and planned some rural walk, or rustic entertainment. The ills
that flesh is heir to, if they occurred for a moment, appeared like idle
visions. They were inconceivable as real things. As I heard the lark
singing in "a glorious privacy of light," and saw the boughs of the
green and gold laburnum waving at my window, and had my fancy filled
with images of natural beauty, I felt a glow of fresh life in my veins,
and my soul was inebriated with joy. It is difficult, amidst such
exhilarating influences, to entertain those melancholy ideas which
sometimes crowd upon, us, and appear so natural, at a less happy hour.
Even actual misfortune comes in a questionable shape, when our physical
constitution is in perfect health, and the flowers are in full bloom,
and the skies are blue, and the streams are glittering in the sun. So
powerfully does the light of external nature sometimes act upon