WINTER SUNSHINE. 



AN American resident in England is reported as 

 saying that the English have an atmosphere but no 

 climate. The reverse of this remark would apply 

 pretty accurately to our own case. We certainly 

 have a climate, a two-edged one that cuts both ways, 

 threatening us with sun-stroke on the one hand and 

 with frost-stroke on the other, but we have no atmos- 

 phere to speak of in New York and New England, 

 except now and then during the dog-days, or the fit- 

 ful and uncertain Indian Summer. An atmosphere, 

 the quality of tone and mellowness in the near dis- 

 tance, is the product of a more humid climate. Hence, 

 as we go south from New York, the atmospheric 

 effects become more rich and varied, until on reach- 

 ing the Potomac you find an atmosphere as well as a 

 climate. The latter is still on the vehement Ameri- 

 can scale, full of sharp and violent changes and con- 

 trasts, baking and blistering in summer, and nipping 

 and blighting in winter,, but the spaces are not so 

 purged and bare ; the horizon wall does not so often 

 have the appearance of having just been washed and 

 scrubbed down. There is more depth and visibility 



