The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-14 00:00:00

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NORTH 'TALE

A letter from Turin, dated August 9, says:—
Six-and-twenty degrees above zero in the Centi-
grade thermometer—how much does that come to
in the Fahrenheit scale P That lam not able to tell
you, but I can give you my word that it makes a
very respectable summer-heat—so glorious a heat,
indeed, that it seems to absorb all human faculties,
and allow a man no leisure or inclination to write,
talk, or think about anything but it.
The climate of Piedmont, and to a great extent
of all the Subalpine region to the north of the Po,
enjoys a more than Swiss climate for nine months,
and a more than Italian climate for the remaining
three. From late September or early October to
the close of June, and even part of July, it is all
Alpine mist and heavy cloud, drenching, incessant
rain, close, nipping frost, and lingering snow—a
succession of bad weather which might remind one
of England were it not for its more steady in-
clemency. The weather is less inconstant, the
atmosphere calmer, the sky, when swept by
winds or heavy showers, far brighter—indeed, un-
utterably deep and pure; the transition seaeons are,
in spite of the fickleness of the elements and fre-
quent terrific thunderstorms, more enjoyable ; but
the three winter and the three summer months
make England a paradise if contrasted with this
Little Siberia and Little Liberia of the Po valley.
We have here Neapolitans and Sicilians by the
score, men in love with Turin and Piedmont, but
who are panting and dropping from heat as if the
country they came from were Finland or Spitz-
bergen, and they had just issued forth from their
three months' winter night, passing from the moon-
light at the Pole to the vertical sun at the Equator.
From Turin to Naples, or Malta, or Tunis, or, for
that matter, from Genoa, the 'distance is not great,
but the moment you step a score ,or so of miles
inland, the moment you place the Appenine wall
between you and the ever-fanning sea-breezes, you
are at the mercy of a sun that is still fiercely and
intensely Italian, and forsaken by that Providence
which girt all Italy with the refreshing breath of
the Mediterranean wave. The summer is short
here, as I already hinted, because gigantic vapours
cling to the crest of the Alps, and rise higher and
higher, all through May, June, and July, the
hotter the sun darts its rays at them, and the
streams from the mountain glaciers flow more
copious and beautiful, the fiercer the air from this
reeking Lombard furnace wafts up to them ; and all
the plain and the hillside is flooded, and the country
blooms, and the meadows thrive, under the glare
that would blight and parch them; and the night
is chill, the morning cool, and the evening damp ;
and the sunbeams have to struggle for hours before
they break through the gauze-like curtain of mist,
before they rob the grass and foliage of their glitter-
ing dew diamonds. The North gives long and stout
battle to the summer god in this Subalpine region,
and never falls away from the field without a series
of final skirmishes in the shape of sharp deluging
thunderstorms; but at last the dog-days (sol-Bone,
as it is called here) set in ; the sun carries the
victory, the faint white haze which lingered in
the air clears off, the sky assumesits deep
transparent Italian hues, the mountains are
stripped of the rolling, swelling, and shifting phan-
tasmagory of their heavy clouds, their peaks rear
themselves up in the sky with distinct outlines, as
if carved out of the firmament; the .lower ridges
stand forth in bold relief, one above another, like
so many stage decorations •, you can count every
cliff and bluff; the distance of fifty or sixty miles
hardly dims an object before your eyes, through the
medium of this thoroughly dried, painfully rarefied
atmosphere. For eight or ten or twelve weeks the
sky is as limpid and radiant as anywhere in Italy,
more so than anywhere else in the world. But if
summer brings its fiery beauty to the north of Italy,
it leaves behind the sweet land and sea breezes
which temper its ardour in the south. We are
here boxed in between the Alps and the Apennines;
those sweet verdant hills of Superga hem us in up
to the very walls of the first houses of Turin. Down
from the North there is never a breath ; from the
South at times a hot furnace blast of scirocco ; but
for long, long hours, morning, noon, and night, we
have dead, stagnant air, stifling us in our very beds.
Turin is an open town, less a town than any town
in the world, with wide open streets, all straight,
at right angles, all open to the country, all green
at tUe end, all ready to welcome any whiff of air