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 the moral system, that a sweet sensation steals gradually over the heart, even when we think we have reason to be sorrowful, and while we almost accuse ourselves of a want of feeling.  The fretful hypochondriac would do well to bear this fact in mind, and not take it for granted that all are cold and selfish who fail to sympathize with his fantastic cares.  He should remember that men are sometimes so buoyed up by the sense of corporeal power, and a communion with nature in her cheerful moods, that things connected with their own personal interests, and which at other times might irritate