There is a strange similarity--I had nearly called it an affinity--between the climate of any country and the general character of its population; and there is a still stronger and more commonly remarked resemblance between the changes of the weather and the usual course of human life. From the atmosphere around us, and from the alterations which affect it, poets and moralists both, have borrowed a large store of figures; and the words, clouds, and sunshine, light breezes, and terrible storms, are terms as often used to express the variations in man's condition as to convey the ideas to which they were originally applied. But it is the affinity between the climate and the people of which I wish to speak. The sunny lightness of the air of France, the burning heat of Italy and Spain, the cold dullness of the skies of Holland, contrast as strongly with the climate in which we live, as the characters of the several nations amongst themselves; and the fiercer tempests of the south, the more foggy and heavy atmosphere of the north, may well be taken as some compensation for the continual mutability of the weather in our own most changeable air. The differences are not so great here as in other lands. We escape, in general, the tornado and the hurricane, we know little of the burning heat of summer, or the intense cold of winter, as they are experienced in other parts of the world; but at all events, the changes are much more frequent; and we seldom have either a long lapse of sunny days, or a long continued season of frost, without interruption. So it is, too, with the people. Moveable and fluctuating as they always are, seeking novelty, disgusted even with all that is good as soon as they discover that it is old, our laws, our institutions, our very manners are continually undergoing some change, though rarely, very rarely indeed, is it brought about violently and without due preparation. Sometimes it will occur, indeed, both morally and physically, that a great and sudden alteration takes place, and a rash and vehement proceeding will disturb the whole country, and seem to shake the very foundations of society. In the atmosphere, too, clouds and storms will gather in a few hours, and darken the whole heaven. The latter was the case during the first night of Sir Edward Digby's stay at Harbourne House. The evening preceding, as well as the day, had been warm and sunshiny; but about nine o'clock the wind suddenly chopped round to the southward, and when Sir Edward woke on the following morning, as he usually did, about six, he found a strong breeze blowing and rattling the casements of the room, and the whole atmosphere loaded with a heavy sea-mist filled with saline particles, borne over Romney Marsh to the higher country, in which the house was placed.