e Britains. The winter
resort is a colony of squires with the rheumatism, elderly maidens with
delicate throats, worn-out legislators, a German princess or two with a
due train of portly and short-sighted chamberlains, girls with a hectic
flush of consumption, bronchitic parsons, barristers hurried off circuit
by the warning cough. The life of these patients is little more than the
life of a machine. As the London physician says when he bids them
"good-bye," "The nearer you can approach to the condition of a vegetable
the better for your chances of recovery." All the delicious
uncertainties and irregularities that make up the freedom of existence
disappear. The day is broken up into a number of little times and
seasons. Dinner comes at midday, and is as exact to its moment as the
early breakfast or the "heavy tea." And between each meal there are
medicines to be taken, inhalations to be gone through, the due hour of
rest to be allotted to digestion, the other due hour to exercise.

The air of the sick-room lingers everywhere about the place; one
catches, as it were, the far-off hush of the Campo Santo. Life is
reduced to its lowest expression; people exist rather than live. Every
one remembers that every one else is an invalid. Voices are soft,
conversation is subdued, visits are short. There is a languid, sickly
sweetness in the very courtesy of society. Gaiety is simply regarded as
a danger. Every hill is a temptation to too long and fatiguing a climb.
No sunshine makes "the patient" forget his wraps. No coolness of
delicious shade moves him to repose. His whole energy and watchfulness
is directed to the avoidance of a chill. Life becomes simply
barometrical. An east wind is the subject of public lamentation; the
vast mountain range to the north is admired less for its wild grandeur
than for the shelter it affords against the terrible mistral. Excitement
is a word of dread. Distance itself takes something of the sharpness
and vividness off from the old cares and interests of home. The very
letters that reach the winter resort are doctored, and "incidents which
might excite" are excluded by the care of correspondents: Mamma only
hears of Johnny's measles when Johnny is running about again. The young
scapegrace at Oxford is far too considerate to trouble his father,
against the doctor's orders, with the mention of his failure in the
schools. News comes with all colour strained and filtered out of it
through the columns