78 
IN SEARCH OF A CLIMATE. 
[Nature and Alt, August 1, I860*. 
IN SEARCH 01 
S INCE oiu' last number was published a cam- 
paign, of which we hardly yet know the details, 
and of which we are yet to learn the effect, has 
been lost and won. Sufficient blood of complacent 
subjects has been fratricidally shed, it may be by 
previous concert, to satisfy the honour of absolutist 
monarchs, and to pave the way for what the bureau- 
crats will call “studious re-examinations” or “pacific 
solutions.” The downcast innkeepers, whose best 
chance then was that some spoil of war and wages 
of blood might in part compensate them for war- 
taxation and the absence of Milord and his follow- 
ing, now think that the travelling multitude may 
yet appear to them in the course of the autumn. 
Those wish-engendered thoughts we can hardly 
share, if, indeed, we sympathize with them ; for 
though, in 1795, when Pichegru and the army of 
the Directory were hammering at the gates of 
Elirenbreitstein, it suited the famous Mrs. Ann 
Radcliffe to undertake a German tour, after the 
labours of publishing her successful “ Mysteries 
of Udolplio,” we imagine that the English matron 
of to-day will scarcely court such scant amenities 
as our country-folk may expect from the successful 
and inflated Prussians. In our own opinion, the 
Continent — or so much of it as is represented by 
all Germany, Lombardo- Venetia, and Piedmont — 
will, for many reasons, be intolerable this autumn 
(should even peace be maintained) to all travellers 
not in search of profit or adventure. Our wealthy 
neighbours who can pay for the “ rest and repose,” 
or the “ change of air,” which, according to their 
several views, is afforded to them by a continental 
scamper, will, we are sure, be of our opinion, and 
to such the advent of a new pioneer is certainly 
most opportune. 
Let us offer sympathy, then, to the authors whose 
handbooks to the Spas and Bader and Brunnen will 
pine this year upon the shelves, and accredit warmly 
to a section of the pleasure-seeking public (for whose 
use in truth it was never written), the work of a 
learned and volatile expert, who, in his 450 pages, 
exhausts for us Mentone and the Riviera, skims 
along the Italian coast, sips of Corsica, swoops 
upon Sicily, flutters over Biarritz, kisses fondly the 
Italian lakes, and, homeward-bound — for the sum- 
mer only — shakes indignantly from his shoes the 
snow of the Simplon, thankful to have passed its 
Alpine horrors in hygienic safety. “ Euns rediens- 
que gaudet” is his fanciful motto ; a swallow his 
crest ; and many, we foresee, must in time be in- 
duced, and, under Providence, permitted, to follow 
the system and example set forth in his genial 
writings. This we are bound to say seriously ; for 
here is no unpractical preacher, no blind guide, no 
immoveable signpost ; but a man of science and a 
* Winter in the South of Europe, By J. Henry Bennet, 
M.D. (John Churchill & Sons.) 
A CLIMATE.* 
sufferer, who has formed, by experiment upon him- 
self and for his own benefit, a code of health-rules 
and a system of health-travelling, which have 
notoriously been of supreme advantage to himself 
and those to whom his condition was once a matter 
of grave solicitude. 
“ Now that rest and the mild Southern winters have in a 
measure restored me to health, I am desirous to make the 
Biviera, and especially Mentone, known to the tribe of 
sufferers obliged to fly from England, 1 merrie’ in winter to 
only the hale and strong who can defy and enjoy the cutting 
winds, the rain, the snow, and the frost of a Northern 
land.” 
Such is his text; and we shall help the good 
cause of the preacher, and, we hope, amuse some 
who need no advice, if we follow awhile his foot- 
steps. 
Twenty-two miles from Nice, to which there is 
“ through ” railway communication, lies Mentone, 
capital of the lately-annexed principality of Monaco. 
An able-bodied traveller may gallop there from 
London (523 miles) in forty-five hours, or less ; an 
invalid should proceed, according to Dr. Bennet 
and common sense, in the totally different method 
set out in the Appendix. The town is on a bay 
four miles wide, landlocked by the extreme spurs 
of the Maritime Alps. Its salubrity is not derived 
from latitude alone, but from the protection on the 
north and east afforded by this chain. Its inner line 
of defence against the pernicious Mistral is formed 
by hills of from 500 to 1,500 feet, rising to an am- 
phitbeatre of from 3,000 to 4,000 feet altitude. 
Twenty or thirty miles in advance, again, is the 
main range of the Maritime Alps, effectively ob- 
structing or diverting every variation of northerly 
wind, and giving an immunity from the bitter cold 
engendered on the continent of Europe. Here, on 
warm terraces, protected from all winds but the 
south, winter may be said not to exist. The lively 
lizard never liybernates, the swallow never migrates, 
and you must reach the latitude of Palermo, six 
degrees farther south, before you can again find 
lemons growing in full perfection and in open air 
like apples in an English orchard. It is during 
winter, of course, that such a climate is especially 
valuable to the rheumatic, the phthisical, and the 
general valetudinarian tribe. Eor them, like 
Ventnor and the Undercliff of the Isle of Wight, 
Mentone is rendered unpleasantly hot, if not un- 
wholesome, in August and September, by the shelter 
of those ramparts that are a blessing in winter-time. 
Those invalids to whom fortune permits two homes, 
and who would follow our author’s advice, should 
dally on the way rather than reach the town before 
the 20th of October, and they may safely, it would 
seem, follow his custom and venture northwards on 
the 20th of April. During a Mentone winter there 
is no fog, at sea or on land, day or night, morning 
or evening; and such is the power of the sun, 
