J 84 ON THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN MENTAL 



in those conversant with the worhl and daily mixing with the scenes 

 of its common occurrences, Imagination seldom assumes a paramount 

 or overwhelming sway; but in the dweller of the south, in the 

 recluse, in the student, in the drunkard, and in the opium-eater, its 

 workings are powerful and varied, and give birth to phenomena 

 pleasing, melancholy, and terrific. 



The natives of the south are a lively, versatile people, sanguine 

 in their temperament, remarkable for the predominance of the func- 

 tions of the brain and nervous systems, a.nd susceptible, to an extra- 

 ordinary degree, of every impression. Their minds seem to inherit 

 the brilliancy of their climate, and are rich with sparkling thoughts 

 ^nd beautiful imagery. Their passions are at the beck of an imagi- 

 nation which compounds its glowing scenes from materials of which 

 the inhabitants of northern climes are totally ignorant. The ob- 

 jects, which present themselves to the senses there, call forth this 

 faculty in its highest degree : the orange grove, yellow with golden 

 fruit — 



** The vines,— not nailed to walls,— from tree to tree festooned," 



the warm and equal temperature of the climate, which leading the 

 bulk of the population to dwell in the open air, produces that con- 

 stant and free interchange of word and thought so conducive to the 

 exaltation of feeling and passion. 



Conversant with every thing warm, and beautiful, and highly 

 coloured, and sweetly smelling, and sweetly sounding, the mind is 

 rich in those scenes which imagination has bodied forth in the pic- 

 tures, statues, and poetry of the Italian and Spanish masters, 

 in the designs and colouring of Titian, and Michael Angelo, in 

 the Apollo Belvidere, the Medicean Venus, and in the works of 

 Tasso, Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto. All in the south tends to 

 furnish the liveliest and most pleasing pictures to the imagination, 

 those which the mind takes delight to dwell upon, and which lose 

 nothing in the retention — 



" the very language, 

 Which sounds as tho' it should be writ on satin, 

 -With syllables that breath of the sweet south." 



