than in the more southern coast-towns, partly on account of the absorbent nature of the soil; moreover, it does not lack a certain bracing quality.

The undercliff in the Isle of Wight, Hastings, and St. Leonards are cheerful and sunny spots, more bracing than the resorts farther north, and not so bracing as those further east. Brighton possesses a very bracing, stimulating sea air; a much too decided sea climate for many delicate persons, whom it often renders bilious and dyspeptic. Eastbourne and Folkestone are excellent quarters, both for sea air and sea-bathing. Folkestone is especially bracing on its east and west cliffs, where, at a considerable elevation above the sea, the air is less charged with moisture, and when the wind blows off the land it comes fresh across the fine open downs behind the coast. Dover is a good and convenient bathing-station. Still further east, but maintaining something of a southern aspect, we have Ramsgate, and then, with a more decidedly eastern aspect, Margate. These two last are most valuable bracing health-resorts, the air there possessing important tonic properties. On the drier and more bracing east coast we have Lowestoft, Yarmouth, Cromer, Filey, Scarboro', Whitley, Redcar, and others.

The health-resorts on the French and Belgian coasts on the other side of the channel possess a drier and brighter air than our own coast towns, and, as they are very accessible, they offer decided attractions to those persons, and they are very numerous, who find advantage in breathing a drier air than can be obtained in Great Britain. Boulogne, Dieppe, Trouville, Fécamp, and especially Etretat, are favourite French resorts; the latter is exceedingly picturesque, and has the advantage of being a place of much more simple and quiet manners than its neighbours. On the Belgian coast, Ostend is the best known and most popular watering-place, but Blankenberghe, a fishing-village about three hours by rail from Bruges, is, for many reasons, much to be preferred. It has a finer promenade on the seashore, and the life there is much more retired and simple.

Having thus hastily attempted to characterize a few of the principal resorts where sea air and sea-bathing can be enjoyed, I must next pass briefly in review a few of the chief mountain stations on the continent; and first of all, on account of its importance, and because I am personally better acquainted with it than any other, I will speak of the Engadine. The Upper Engadine, as a mountain health-resort, must be regarded as typical and unique, so far as Europe is concerned. Its general physical and historical characters have already been ably described in this Review.1 It is a wide valley, running for many miles at a nearly uniform level of from 5,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea, and bounded by mountains of compara

(1) See Fortnightly Review for March, 1876.

tively moderate height. By its considerable elevation and its peculiar geographical position, it is removed, in a great measure, from the regions of cloud and mist. By its peculiar geographical position I mean its remoteness from the lower-lying districts which are nearest it. From the north it is approached by a road which, starting in the Rhone Valley at an elevation of over 2,000 feet above the sea, pursues for nearly fifty miles a steady ascent, the only notable descent in the whole way being at Tiefenkasten (2,900 feet), thence for nearly thirty miles the ascent is unbroken till the northern barrier of the valley is surmounted. On the south it is separated from the Val Tellina, about thirty miles distant, by a vast mountain range covered with ice and snow, and reaching an elevation of nearly 14,000 feet, and which protects it, to a great extent, from the mists rising from the southern plains of Italy. Towards the east it stretches for thirty miles without descending 1,000 feet, and then it is again separated from any lower level by a high mountain range, which forms a striking and grand eastern boundary to the Upper Engadine. Its only vulnerable point, speaking climatologically, is towards the west, or rather south-west, where it descends somewhat suddenly into the Val Bregaglia; this descent continues steadily towards the south-west, till it reaches the Lake of Como. It is from this quarter that nearly all the clouds and rain come that visit the Engadine. It is to this remoteness from the lower levels that the Engadine owes its peculiar and characteristic mountain climate; and it is on this account that persons fail to find the same bracing effects at the same, or nearly the same, elevations elsewhere.

It is not difficult to characterize the different villages in the Upper Engadine where visitors may dwell. Samaden has obtained a vogue, and is popular in spite of its extremely uninteresting position. It is situated just at the spot where the Upper Engadine begins to be almost ugly. But a good hotel, and an obliging and clever landlord, has no doubt contributed much towards creating and maintaining its popularity. Then it has a certain prestige as the capital of the valley. It serves, too, as a kind of reservoir for the reception of the stream of visitors who are waiting for accommodation at Pontresina or St. Moritz, being about equidistant from both. Then, for some, it probably has attractions of a theological kind, for a sturdy hand has raised here, in a conspicuous manner, the standard of the Evangelical party.

Pontresina is the most popular of the Engadine villages. Its situation is exceedingly picturesque, and it possesses several very excellent hotels. It is, moreover, the most convenient station for exploring the high mountains, the valleys, and the glaciers of this portion of the Upper Engadine. It is close to the foot of Piz

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Languard, the Rigi of the Engadine, and it is about an hour nearer the glaciers of the Morteratsch and the Rosegg than either St. Moritz or Samaden. It is out of the way of the patients and the doctors of St. Moritz, but it is in the way of the raw, blistered, bespectacled faces and be-roped bodies of alpine club-men of all nations. It has been said to have a milder climate than St. Moritz, but from frequent personal observations I am led to doubt whether this is the case. I believe it is both hotter and colder than St. Moritz. From its situation in a wide open space at the junction of two lateral valleys with the main one, it is much exposed to the direct rays of the sun for many hours during the day; and around and near the village I have at times found the sun-heat greater and more unbearable than in almost any other locality I am acquainted with. But for the same reasons it is to be expected that the nocturnal cold would be greater than at St. Moritz, and it is so situated as to receive directly the cold gusts of air blowing down the Rosegg valley. I have certainly experienced colder winds at Pontresina than at St. Moritz.

St. Moritz is the head-quarters of the "cure," and has much to recommend it, especially for the water-drinkers. It is overrun with hotels and pensions. It has three churches, a kurhaus, and a chemist's shop. I have elsewhere entered fully into its special characters as a health-resort.1 A convenient abode for those who would be at St. Moritz, but not of St. Moritz, is the village of Campfer, about a mile from the baths, and in an exceedingly picturesque part of the upper valley of the Inn. Both the upper road which connects it with the village of St. Moritz, and the lower road along the banks of the Inn (especially a path through the woods on the right bank of the river) command exceedingly pretty views of lake, river, and mountain; and the wooded mountain sides around the village afford facilities for quiet rambles not to be found in the more frequented parts of the valley. About two miles higher up the valley is Silva Plana, a pretty village charmingly situated at the foot of the Julier Pass. It is a post station and is the first village arrived at after crossing the Julier, and as few people like to remain at the place they first reach, and as it is too far off for those whose destination is St. Moritz, Silva Plana has always appeared to me to have an air of unrest about it, as if everybody there was on the point of going somewhere else. Still higher up are the villages of Sils and Sils Maria, one on the north, the other on the south side of the valley. They are in the most picturesque part of the Upper Engadine and are provided with good hotels, but they are so far away from its more frequented parts, that to remain at either village is sufficient to give one the character of a misanthrope.

(1) "Notes of a Season at St. Moritz." Longmans.

The Davos valley is another mountain station in the Grisons, about 5,000 feet above the sea. It is situated to the north of the Engadine, with which it runs parallel, at a distance, as the crow flies, of probably not more than twenty miles. To the lover of the picturesque it can offer few attractions compared with those of the Engadine, only a few hours distant; while the fact that it is the special resort of several hundred consumptive patients would, in itself, deter many from making it a resting-place. It has a kurhaus, which has been carefully fitted up and adapted with baths and douches for the systematic treatment of chest affections. Of the advantage of this course of treatment, combined with prolonged residence in this high mountain valley, to many who have suffered from chest disease, there can be no longer any doubt. This is not, however, a suitable occasion to discuss the question of the influence of mountain climates in the treatment of pulmonary consumption, important and interesting as it is. Of the mode in which mountain air acts in these cases I have elsewhere expressed my opinion.1

Bormio, 4,300 feet above the sea, at the foot of the Stelvio, on the Italian side, and at the head of the Val Tellina, is also in the immediate neighbourhood of the Engadine, and a pedestrian starting from Pontresina can cross over the mountainous path which extends from the Bernina road to Bormio in one long day. Carriages have to make a long detour by Tirano in the Val Tellina.

Bormio has long been known for its thermal springs; its climate is milder and more equable than that of the Engadine, owing partly to its southern aspect and partly to its lower elevation. It serves, therefore, admirably as a refuge for those who find the cold. of the Engadine too severe and its climate generally too exciting. Much, however, cannot be said as to the beauty of its situation. The country around has a barren and unattractive aspect, and the Baths of Bormio have a background of reddish, hot-looking, bare mountains of uniform sugar-loaf form. But it is close to very beautiful scenery; for it is only seven miles through the picturesque Val Furva to the Baths of Santa Catarina, 5,700 feet above the sea, a mountain station very nearly as high as St. Moritz, and, like St. Moritz, possessing a strong chalybeate spring. This is an exceedingly beautiful spot, surrounded by a semicircle of magnificent snow-covered summits. From its position on the southern side of the Alps, and from its being enclosed by an amphitheatre of lofty mountains, its climate is no doubt much less bracing than that of the Upper Engadine. Were it not for this circumstance, and its greater distance from home, Santa Catarina would certainly become a formidable rival to St. Moritz.

The Baths of Tarasp and the picturesquely situated village of (1) Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, August, 1876.

Schuls, about a mile from the baths, as well as the little hamlet of Vulpera still nearer the baths, ranging from 4,000 to 4,800 feet above the sea, are also in the vicinity of St. Moritz, being situated in the Lower Engadine, about six hours' drive from Samaden. Here the climate is much milder than in the upper valley of the Inn. The waters of Tarasp have virtues, and a deservedly high reputation, of their own, quite independent of the mountain climate; but Schuls and Vulpera offer excellent resorts for those who need less decidedly bracing treatment than is to be found at St. Moritz, while they also afford convenient intermediate resting-places for those delicate and sensitive persons who may desire to avoid either a too sudden approach to, or a too sudden descent from, the rarefied air of the Upper Engadine.

The villages of Bergün and Molins, the one on the Albula Pass and the other on the Julier, are the places, perhaps, most commonly selected for the purpose of breaking this ascent or descent. But apart from the fact that the latter certainly is hardly sufficient of a break, they neither of them afford comfortable accommodation for two or three days' stay. Bergün is most picturesquely situated, and if the village were improved in cleanliness and a really good hotel established there, it ought to prove an attractive resting-place en route to or from the Engadine.

A new resource has been provided this season for breaking conveniently the descent from St. Moritz, by the opening of an hotel in one of the most beautiful parts of the Val Bregaglia-the Hotel Bregaglia —situated between Vico Soprano and Castasegna, and between 1,000 and 2,000 feet higher than Chiavenna, the station to which persons hitherto had to descend in going from the Engadine towards Como and North Italy. This will be a real gain to invalids going south.

Monte Generoso, situated between the lakes of Lugano and Como, and usually ascended from the town of Mendrisio, has lately become justly popular as a health-resort, since Dr. Pasta has established a comfortable hotel a few hundred feet below the peak, which is between 5,000 and 6,000 feet above the sea. This, for its elevation, is a comparatively mild mountain situation, and better suited on that account to highly sensitive organizations, while the beauty of the scenery it commands can scarcely be surpassed. It is a most convenient locality for persons coming north, after wintering in the south of France or Italy.

Of other frequented European mountain stations a very brief account must suffice. Of very bracing health-resorts, over 6,000 feet, the following are the best known :-The hotels on the Eggisch-horn and the Bel-Alp, the former ascended from Viesch, the latter from Bricg in the Rhone Valley, in the midst of the grandest mountain scenery, and close to the great Aletsch Glacier ;