But
'twere wiser to select some other point of your excellence, for
comparison, than a competition with the glorious waters, the fantastic and
mountain isles, and the sunny hill-sides of modern Napoli! 'Tis certain
the latitude is even in your favor, and that a beneficent sun does not
fail of its office in one region more than in the other. But the forests
of America are still too pregnant of vapors and exhalations, not to impair
the purity of the native air. If I have seen much of the Mediterranean,
neither am I a stranger to these coasts. While there are so many points of
resemblance in their climates, there are also many and marked causes of
difference."
"Teach us, then, what forms these distinctions, that, in speaking of our
bay and skies, we may not be led into error."
"You do me honor, lady; I am of no great schooling, and of humble powers
of speech. Still, the little that observation may have taught me, shall
not be churlishly withheld. Your Italian atmosphere, taking the humidity
of the seas, is sometimes hazy. Still water in large bodies, other than in
the two seas, is little known in those distant countries. Few objects in
nature are drier than an Italian river, during those months when the sun
has most influence. The effect is visible in the air, which is in general
elastic, dry, and obedient to the general laws of the climate. There
floats less exhalation, in the form of fine and nearly invisible vapor,
than in these wooded regions.
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