46 SOME REMARKS ON THE PHILOSOPHY AND 



than Shakspeare could have anticipated. Common experience tells 

 us many truths, and this among the number, that change of climate 

 affects us in various ways, influencing both the nervous and san- 

 guineous systems, but more especially the nervous. Fresh air is 

 peculiarly sedative, especially to those long excluded from it. This, 

 of course, is self-evident ; but the poet here implies a peculiar slate 

 of the air, or " quality of the climate :" " the dull and drowsy 

 ayr."* That the air is susceptible of changes in its density and 

 rarity is sufficiently plain, as are its effects upon the body. In as- 

 cending mountains the changes of climates are sensibly felt, and 

 drowsiness is a common result, even when independent of change 

 of temperature. The atmosphere cannot be varied in its elements 

 or their proportions without injury to life, and therefore these 

 qualities of the climate must depend upon some extrinsic and super- 

 added agent, which is most probably electricity, the animi mundi 

 and animating cause of every atmospheric phenomenon, whether of 

 the " swift- winged cloud," black and impetuous,t or the filmy 

 gauze high up amid the stars of heaven. 



Some persons are more powerfully affected by atmospherical 

 changes than others, and more so during the summer solstice, when 

 the atmosphere is positively electrified. Females, particularly, are 

 influenced by thunder-storms, and in some instances so strongly as 

 to induce hysteria and epilepsy. The sensibility of an amputated 

 limb, or a once-fractured bone, during atmospheric changes, is gene- 

 rally known. Even a " shooting corn" is no mean barometer. 

 Considering the identity of electricity with the "nervous fluid," 

 these and every such like sympathy between man and the external 

 world is explained. 



Soil and vegetation are of course essential to the u quality of the 

 climate," which in "producing sleep," as Antonio remarks, "is 

 just philosophy, though but common observance." 



The humourous Trinculo, discovering Calaban, comments most 

 wisely on the monster : — 



Trinculo. — ' What have we here ? a man or a fish ? 

 Dead or alive ? A fish : he smells like a fish ; a 

 Very ancient and fish-like smell. 



• Spenser. 



+ The nimbus. The cirrus, so prevalent in summer, especially in the quiet 

 repose of evening. In the advancement of science, that of meteorology, 

 one of the most interesting, and yet neglected, may hereafter inform us 

 how to oppose those evils which surround us ; for science is useless unless 

 it be applicable to our wants. 



