=* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook *= This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the eBook. If either of these conditions applies, please contact a https://www.fadedpage.com administrator before proceeding. Thousands more FREE eBooks are available at https://www.fadedpage.com. This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE. _Title:_ Blossom-Land and Fallen Leaves _Date of first publication:_ 1891 _Author:_ Clement Scott (1841-1904) _Date first posted:_ August 24, 2026 _Date last updated:_ August 24, 2026 Faded Page eBook #20260846 This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, John Routh & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net [Cover Illustration] [Illustration: Portrait photo of Clement Scott] Frontispiece: May we meet in Blossom-Land! Yours, Clement Scott BLOSSOM-LAND AND FALLEN LEAVES. BY CLEMENT SCOTT _THIRD AND CHEAPER EDITION._ London: HUTCHINSON & CO., 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. TO ONE WHOSE GENTLE HAND FIRST LED ME TO THE PLEASANT PATHS OF BLOSSOM-LAND! IN WHOSE DEAR EYES I STILL CAN TRACE THE BLUE FORGET-ME-NOTS OF MIRRORED MEMORIES! AND ON WHOSE HONOURED HEAD AGE SCATTERS SNOWS OF EVERLASTING SPRING To MY MOTHER PREFACE. Is it wise or foolish to keep old letters? All my life long I have been troubled with doubt upon this subject! I mean, of course, the pleasant, delightful letters associated with valued friends, happy hours, the relief of summer-time after long months of toil, memories that no change can soil, and no time destroy. As to the disagreeable, spiteful letters that harass and embitter one’s daily life, the sooner they are torn into a thousand scraps and thrust into the fire of forgetfulness the better. I honestly own that I have a mania for keeping letters that give as much pleasure in the sending as in the receiving. To tear up a scrap of life that has any love on it gives me a pang; to burn a record of happiness seems, if not a scant courtesy, at least a churlish act of indifference. Life seems more endurable when one is fortified with an armour of affection, however worn, however battered, however tarnished. This little book is only a collection of old love letters, or rather a hurried record of familiar scenes and delightful days, connected with some of the happiest holiday hours of a hard-working and restless life. As I read the pages over, the only thing that surprises me is the change that has taken place since I wrote them—not in me, but in the scenes I have attempted to describe. The Cromer that we visit now is not the Cromer I wrote about but a few short years ago as my beloved Poppy-land. As I look from the station hill I see the intervening space between railway and cliff cut up into building plots, and the Lighthouse Down threatened by the speculative contractor. Overstrand, once a picturesque collection of farmhouses and fishermen’s cottages, is now a pretty colony of red-brick houses as smart as Bedford Park. The telegraph wire has joined Sidestrand to civilisation, and a daily omnibus full of excursionists passes the garden front of the dear old Mill House where I have dreamed so often and leaned over the white gate in delightful solitude. As it is at Cromer so elsewhere. Scarcely a familiar pass or mountain in Switzerland has not been tunnelled through or provided with a cog-wheeled railway. The smoke and snort of the locomotive disturb our English lanes and our mountain solitudes. Even our own London is not the same as it was yesterday: it changes every hour. Once on a time the tired toiler could say of scores of places now popularised, “Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes angulus ridet.” So I have to seek solitude and peace elsewhere; the record of the past alone remains; and here I offer it for what it may be worth. “Ah! yes, it’s all very well,” say my friends; “but if you had not been in such a hurry to write about these places in the newspapers, they might still be primitive, picturesque and peaceful. It is you who are the destroyer!” Well, perhaps that is true, but I cannot help it. I could not refrain from telling others how happy I was in scenes that belong to the past, but are still landmarks in a lifetime. If I have destroyed my own selfish comfort I can but trust that I have made others happy who do not enjoy the charms of solitude as much as I have done in the past, whose faded pleasures are tinged with the inevitable sadness of recollection. CLEMENT SCOTT. _June, 1890._ CONTENTS I. A VILLAGE ON THE CLIFFS II. ON CROMER CLIFFS III. POPPY-LAND IV. A DAY IN POPPY-LAND V. A CRUISE UPON WHEELS VI. A HARBOUR OF REFUGE VII. BRAVO TORO! A TRAGEDY IN THREE ACTS VIII. A CELLAR OF CHAMPAGNE IX. CHILDREN AT THE SEA X. AN ISLAND OF SLEEP XI. THE VALLEY OF THE LAHN XII. HUNTING THE OTTER XIII. A PALACE OF PEACE XIV. AMERICA BY THE AVON XV. THE VALLEY OF THE SEINE XVI. A HARVEST SUN XVII. A HARVEST MOON XVIII. LEANING OVER THE GATE. A CHRISTMAS REVERIE XIX. AMONG THE BLOSSOMS XX. “THE GARDEN OF SLEEP” XXI. AMONG THE CORNFIELDS XXII. FROM LAKE TO MOUNTAIN XXIII. FLORA’S FÊTE IN COVENT GARDEN XXIV. AN ALPINE PASS XXV. SUMMER IN SWITZERLAND XXVI. IN THE TAUNUS VALLEY XXVII. CARNATION ISLAND XXVIII. OCTOBER IN LEAF XXIX. LONDON IN LEAF XXX. A HAPPY VALLEY XXXI. THE YEAR’S END AT AN OLD FARM Blossom-Land and Fallen Leaves I. A VILLAGE ON THE CLIFF. After many wanderings in search of the picturesque, I have happily fallen on what may fairly be considered a perfect watering-place. Concerning the beau-ideal of seaside resorts opinions may no doubt differ. Cromer is not certainly the kind of place I should conscientiously recommend to the young ladies with travelling trunks filled with fashionable gowns, or to the young gentlemen who consider they are irresistible in blue serge or shepherd’s plaid; it is not a Paradise for dressing or dancing; its pier or jetty, very limited in extent, affords little opportunity for those exercises of observation and satire which are the prominent amusements of some English watering-places. For music Cromer has to depend upon wandering minstrels who have tramped along the pretty Norfolk roads to pipe or grind the airs of Franz Abt and Kücken in the romantic streets of an old-fashioned fishing village. For entertainment it can honestly offer nothing better than the travelling circus that has pitched on a grass meadow within a dozen yards of the grassy cliff overhanging our picturesque and secluded beach. Not a whisper of a music-hall song, not a whistle from the tuneful lips of our familiar friend ’Arry, not a donkey-boy or a goat-chaise, not a gipsy or a mountebank, no reciters of poetry on the sands or advocates of temperance on the shingle, break in upon the consistent peace, the undisturbed quiet, of a spot that has the cleanliness of Cornwall, the seclusion of Etretat, the romantic surroundings of Lynton or Ilfracombe, and an air so pure, so bracing, so energising, and so health-giving that it almost makes one break faith with our own familiar Margate and our Westgate-on-Sea of happy memories. It may be safely said, touching the aforesaid idealism of sea-coast haunts, that as a rule some strong exception can be taken to almost every popular watering-place around and about our sea-girt islands. One is too shingly, the other too sandy; here the cliffs are too precipitous, there we find no cliffs at all; if the air be charged with ozone and vigour, the landscape as a rule is deplorably flat or hopelessly dull; health has to be imbibed with the disagreeable necessity of contemplating barren chalk plains or treeless fields; if, on the other hand, the trees come down to the water’s edge, the heather is on the hills, the wildflowers are in abundance, and the neighbouring walks are full of charm and variety, there comes sometimes the disagreeable necessity of feeling that the climate is relaxing, the air moist and humid, and the constitution is diurnally compelled to submit itself to a vapour-bath that leaves the spirits depressed and the frame limp. Judge, then, of my surprise when I stood on the hill that is crowned with the Cromer railway station, and looked down on the wooded hollow where the village lies sheltered by two noble sweeps of grassy and fern-covered down. I had left Yarmouth, with its stretches of incomparable sand, its unrelieved flatness, its lines of low houses, its long roads, its lakes and dykes, its windmills and Dutch scenery, and had begun to despair of beauty along the eastern coast. Here, however, was a veritable oasis in the desert, cliffs planted in the county of sandy stretches, woods and groves appearing where no trees had hitherto been seen, the grey square church tower seen in the centre of a cluster of red-roofed houses, a white lighthouse rising from a green garden of ferns, relieved by bright patches of purple heather, fields covered with scarlet poppy and already ripe for the harvest, flower-fringed lanes, an inexpressible quiet, and above all an air coming across from the sea perfectly laden with vigour, health and exhilaration. From this overlook at the Cromer station the village on the cliff was to my mind as bright and bracing as Broadstairs in the old days, with the additional charm of a natural framework of wooded scenery, as prettily situated as leafy Lynton, with the supreme advantage of an aspect straight across the North Sea, whence drive the health-laden breezes. A cynic whispered in my ear as I stood contemplating the distant village, the grassy cliffs, the woods of Cromer Hall in the immediate neighbourhood, the calm blue sea, dotted over with white sails and pleasure-boats, that “the best view of Cromer was to be had from the railway station,” and straightway dilated on the tardiness of the speculative builder about the fields and pastures of this ideal spot. He would have cut down the woods and converted them into building plots, carved out the arable land into sites for artistic villas; he would have crowned the grassy cliffs with esplanade and marina, and carted away the fern and the heather to make way for bricks and mortar. How differently men view precisely the same situation! Here was I, as I looked down on this romantically situated and dreamy Cromer, wondering why my countrymen and countrywomen every summer stuff themselves into the doghole accommodation of such villages as Etretat and Sainte-Adresse, paying fabulous sums for accommodation that peasants would despise, submitting themselves to inconveniences and disorder on a shingly beach under an ugly cliff with an uninteresting background, when here was—a fishing village it is true—but a clean and commodious one, a sand almost as good as Yarmouth, a cliff as smooth as a lawn-tennis plot, and a surrounding country as beautiful and as varied as any that the most favoured districts of England could afford. It was a bit of Devonshire transplanted to the eastern coast. My more practical friend could not see such a situation at all with my eyes. In imagination, he had pulled down Cromer and built it up again on a new model, he had built a row of villas between the lighthouse and the village, and he had covered the span intervening between the railway station and the old grey flint church and its solemn grey tower with a speculative estate placarded with lodgings and apartments in every other window. If you want to have an idea what Cromer is,—how simple its life, how peaceful its little history, how much charm it contains for the recluse and the reading man, what fields for the naturalist and botanist, what butterflies are to be caught there, what ferns to be selected, what sketches to be made at sunrise and sunset, what walks the neighbourhood provides, what mornings on the fern-covered downs looking out to sea, what afternoons amongst the woods of Felbrigg and Sherringham, what lawn tennis on the firm white sand, what evenings on the old wooden pier when the sun is sinking, what nights of sleep though the wild wind howls out seaward,—come with me, and I will try to sketch a Cromer day. The only charm is its simplicity; its only recreation is its rest. For costume you may put on a lawn-tennis jacket, some flannels and shoes, and walk about the village streets without being stared at; thus apparelled you may go upwards to the downs or downwards to the sea; for companion you can have nothing better than a book to squeeze under your arm, unless, indeed, fate has bestowed on you a closer and more actual sympathy—a voice to listen to and a mind to share, a face to brighten and a heart to enjoy. I saw two such sympathetic ones only just now working their way towards the lighthouse cliff, happy in the possession of youth and light-heartedness, facing the breezes, each intent on the other, and I watched them lessening in the distance until they disappeared behind a rising down and were lost to view. They seemed on the whole far happier in the Cromer air than the conventional young lady who pretends to read a book on the seaside pier, though she manages to look up undesignedly at every passer-by; or the still more conventional youth, who brings Bond Street airs to the sea and the shingle, and whose sense of enjoyment is derived from the prodigality of starch imparted to his shirt-collar by an admiring laundress. At Cromer, however simple we may be, we are at least natural; and, if my plan of a seaside day is considered by many dull and slow, monotonous and uneventful, it may be possibly appreciated by an idle few who do not wholly neglect the pleasures of imagination. It is morning at Cromer, the sun high in the heavens, a strong north-west wind blowing, the sea just flecked with white, and a good prospect of fair weather at last. The air, coming in fresh to the bedroom window, has already new life in it; no sound is heard above the wind but the fisherman calling lobsters in the streets. Although so early on this bright summer morning, already there is one sight that has been missed. From the very window with the sea outlook it might have been possible, had not sleep been so strong, to behold a sunrise as beautiful as any that drags the visitors out of their beds on the top of the Righi Kulm, in Switzerland. For Cromer, let me tell you, is one of the few watering-places where, in the summer months, you can see the sun rise straight out of the ocean. As yet, however, I have noticed no disposition to study sunrises at Cromer. The air is so laden with sleep, the whole district is so covered with poppies, that the four o’clock arousing is, I find, indefinitely postponed. Young ladies leaning upon the Cromer balconies after breakfast make up their minds to see the sun rise the very next morning, but somehow or other their good resolutions fail them, and so far we have had to depend for description of them on the homely Ruskinese of the Cromer fishermen and boatmen, who highly extol the beauties we have lost, with a view, no doubt, to an arrangement whereby a better view of the sunrise might be obtained from the deck of the _Maud_ or the _Alice_. I must therefore be permitted to pass over the Cromer sunrise as a postponed pleasure, and take you out at once to the yellow sands for a morning bath. What a queer, ancient, rambling village it is, reminding one of Cornwall at every turn!—the fine old church with the ruined chancel squeezing itself into a cluster of cottages, and towering over the tiny street. There are not many signs of life, although the clock has struck eight. The fruit and flowers, great peaches and purple grapes, plums and gooseberries, bunches of roses and bundles of sweet-pea, are coming in from the country in the village carts; at the lifeboat station they are adjusting the barometrical chart, and the keeper of it, looking at the falling mercury, promises only doubtfully a fine day; the coastguardsmen outside their neat cottages, standing on their smooth patch of lawn, are occupied as usual with looking out to sea at apparently nothing, but with a most determined purpose; at the corner of every street is a bronzed and healthy-faced sailor, with a knowing look in his face which implies that it is the best possible day for a sail or a fishing expedition; the children are already on their way to the sands with their spades and buckets; but the bathers are the most important factors in the nomadic population. It is the best way to the bath to go by the cliff, and then down a sandy staircase—for the faculty recommend an air-bath as well as a sea-bath at Cromer, and I cannot conceive a better one than can be found on the height round by the coastguard station. And a fresher dip it would be difficult to find, whether from a boat out at sea or from a machine on the beach. It is not too rough nor too calm, and with a brisk walk home by the sands or the cliff the jaded Londoner can “put on” such an appetite as will astonish his landlady and increase materially the sale of Cromer shell-fish. Breakfast over, there is only one thing more to be done—a walk on the sands and so onwards to the cliff. But sand life at Cromer is not like sand life elsewhere. There is plenty of amusement, but very little noise. On Bank Holiday there were a few swings and roundabouts; but now we have relapsed into our normal decorum and propriety. The nigger and the music-hall minstrel never desert Yarmouth for its quieter neighbour; a photographer, it is true, pursues his silent trade; but, as a rule, the visitors provide amusement for themselves. The young ladies bathe, of course, and display a wealth of uncombed back hair; different families are distinguished by their domestic tents pitched on the sands, as at Boulogne and elsewhere; lawn-tennis parties abound, for the sands are hard and firm, and it is surprising with what devotion enthusiastic admirers of the game will drag nets, poles and paraphernalia from their cliff lodgings to some selected spot miles away across the sand. Peace and comfort reign supreme. Some sketch, others read, more geologise. The children seem fonder of hunting for crabs and sea anemones than of building pyramids and Mont Cenis tunnels. They do not cramp themselves into a given circle, as elsewhere; but, as the beach is wide and safe, they scatter to Overstrand in one direction and towards Sherringham in the other, paddling as children will do, and shortening the hours by wearing out their shoes and flinging smooth pebbles into the sea. But enough of the sand, however amusing. The sailing yachts have gone out, under the guardianship of the honest sailors, who have enough to do with the lifeboat in winter-time; the Yarmouth steamer has arrived, and as the weather is fair has been met and unloaded by the beach-boats; the children are scattered, and the sands are tiring, so let us mount at once to the cliffs, up there by the white lighthouse which is so prominent a feature in the landscape. This is, perhaps, the best spot in all Cromer. They say that the Cromer cliffs are gradually falling away, and that the sea has registered a vow to make an end of this charming little village; landslips after landslips have given their customary warning, and scarce a winter passes without some arable acres falling into the hungry ocean. Indeed, the inhabitants, to preserve their houses over their heads, have been compelled to fortify the village with strong sea walls, fearing lest red-roofed street, grey church and all, should one day topple over into the sand, and Cromer be a matter of history. It is for this purpose that the latest lighthouse has been erected, far back on the Cromer grass cliffs, lest it should fall, as did its immediate predecessors, into the sea. Once mounted to the Lighthouse Point, Cromer may be viewed at its very best. The cliffs for miles around are covered with an undergrowth of fern and heather, divided by green paths as firm and true as a billiard table. No glaring white is to be seen anywhere; the cliffs are brown and sandy, the sea blue, the landscape of a universal green. Once up here you can wander for miles along the cliff in peace and quiet, amongst farms and cornfields, and such a variety of wildflowers as I have rarely seen collected together. The brilliant scarlet of the poppy, growing not only in the cornfield, but in masses and borderings at the cliff’s edge; the bright gold of the wild yellow tulip, an inhabitant of these favourite districts; the deep mauve of the Scotch thistle, and the constant purple of the heather, make Cromer cliffs a veritable flower garden—a rare accessory to any English seaside place. On these cliffs—never deserted by a breeze, surrounded by scenery so rich and varied, with farm-land and wood on the right hand and the uncomplaining sea on the left—it would be strange indeed if a luxurious morning could not well be spent, a morning of that idleness which is no stranger to reflection or imagination. Here, resting on the cliff amongst the wildflowers, the blue sky overhead, the air exhilarating, the martins and swallows darting from their holes in pursuit of insects, the corn waving as the breezes sweep across the fields, the sea-face chequered with purple and blue as the clouds flit over the surface, away from the madding crowd, from noise and din and discord and vulgarity, seems the place where busy brains and tired frames might rest for a while and be at peace. The sun is still shining, the weather promises well, all is prosperous; but I must be permitted to reserve for another occasion a description of the afternoon at Cromer, away at Felbrigg and Sherringham, amongst the parks and picnic people and country cottages which make this district so delightful, until the glad day closes with a sunset unspeakably beautiful, illuminating the landscape with multitudinous colour, and withal casting a strange, weird sadness over Cromer cliffs. II. ON CROMER CLIFFS. I left the good people of Cromer, if you remember, after describing a healthy and invigorating village on the cliff, busily occupied in those careless pleasures which are apparently inseparable from the seaside. For it must not be imagined, although we have no representative brass band, no rotunda on the pier-head, no fashionable promenade, no evening dances, no assembly rooms, and very few opportunities for social intercourse, that we scorn the childlike amusements which spring at once from contentment and seclusion. On the contrary, I should say that it would be difficult to find any place of the kind where the visitors who have arrived at a mature and sensible age are more ready to revert to the innocent pleasures of their infancy. Cromer is certainly not distinguished for its children; that is to say, they bear a very slight percentage to the total of its inhabitants. It may be that the sandy and shifting cliffs, with their ugly gaps and ravines, their crumbling bases and tottering cornices, frighten the hearts of nervous mothers; it may be that the necessarily limited accommodation of the village, its fishermen’s cottages and doll’s-house little rooms, alarm the mind of paterfamilias, who, with the best intentions in the world, may be excused in hesitating before he shuts himself up in a bandbox for a month with the olive branches watered by the salt sea and invigorated by the air. To tell the truth, the weather is not, on the whole, much more constant at Cromer than elsewhere; for one sunny day, when outdoor exercise can be taken from morning until night, we have to endure clouds and wind, thunder and showers; and, it is surely unnecessary to add, a wet day at the seaside is considerably aggravated in its woe by the immediate companionship of children made wild by the atmosphere, and unamenable to all discipline in consequence of the freedom that they, like their elders, are so apt to misconstrue and abuse. The children at Cromer, so far as I have observed, are all good children. There are few babies and bottles. The sands are not turned into a nursery. Thus far I have not seen a perambulator or a goat-chaise. At Yarmouth the babies swarm between one jetty and the other. Holes and hollows are dug in the sands, and down into it the miserable infant is plunged, with a feeding-bottle in its mouth, whilst the nursemaid turns aside and flirts with the photographer’s assistant. Rations are served out at Yarmouth by the head nurse, seemingly most appetising to the hungry family, although they consist of sanded bread and butter or scraps of bread and cheese produced from a reticule. We see no such exercises of domestic care at Cromer. The boys all look as if they were home from a public school, had read Cæsar’s Commentaries, and were thinking of starting next term on the Iliad of Homer. They are well-made, active lads, very busy with their butterfly-nets on the Lighthouse Cliffs, amongst the ferny undergrowth, and organise exploring parties for sea anemones on the rocks when the tide is low. Apparently these bright-eyed and well-behaved young gentlemen are candidates for some science prize which will be competed for when the school meets again after the holidays. A short story, founded on fact, will illustrate the conduct of a Cromer lad as contrasted with the noisy youth who makes life hideous at most seaside places. The other afternoon I was astonished to find a young, well-built, and generous-looking English lad careering along the narrow streets of the Cromer village, holding a fisher urchin by the ear and keeping him fast, notwithstanding his fitful shrieks. It appears that there had been a kind of “town and gown” row between the public schoolboy visitors and the Cromer youngsters, and that one of these young scamps had, in a cowardly fashion, hurled a stone and hit the visitor on the forehead. Smarting with pain, the lad refused to thrash his insignificant assailant, who was smaller than himself by many inches; but with stern justice took him by the ear, saying, “I can’t thrash you, you little beggar, you are so beastly small; but I will take you to your father, and he shall do it for me.” In the absence, then, of children at Cromer, those of mature age are not indifferent to the childlike amusements of the sands wherever they are found. These consist of digging and paddling. Fortifications, ramparts and architectural designs of great elaboration are daily created by the curate or the tutor for a reading party of mixed sexes; and I have my eyes to bear me witness that in the case of young and beautiful ladies no years of discretion remove an inherited taste for what is popularly known as “paddling.” Paddling, I need scarcely observe, consists of skirting the fringe or margin of the sea with naked feet; and the pleasure is derived from watching the wavelets at low tide break upon the lower extremities, relieved from the encumbrance of shoes and stockings. This occupation is, as a rule, confined to children properly equipped for the occasion; but Cromer is at once so quiet and innocent in its habits that it is no unknown thing for a lonely pedestrian on the sands to come across a party of nymphs, true to their Venus-born origin, surprised at their partial ablutions by some wandering Actæon with no curiosity whatever in his composition. But come with me, now that the luncheon-bells are ringing at all the little inns and boarding-houses, and see of what Cromer society is composed. We will stand at the head of the cliff staircase by the coastguard station, for here all Cromer must pass on the way to those lobsters awaiting them on the hospitable board. It is a very charming and select society. Boys in flannels and striped cricket-caps come with their butterfly-nets from happy hunting-grounds within a good square mile of the lighthouse hill; girls and maidens in fantastic costumes, bright-eyed, active, and full of health, troop in from the cliffs and country lanes about Overstrand with sheaves of ferns and wild flowers under their arms; young fellows, very probably in the first eleven at some public school, toil across the sand and up the steps towards home burdened with lawn-tennis nets, and followed half wearily by disappointed or successful players; mermaidens with hair streaming down their backs mount to the cliff freshened from the bath; up they come from fishing, from sailing, from exploring, from paddling, from dozing and from dreaming; and they are followed presently by the really studious with a volume of Ruskin in the pocket, or a life of Goethe under the arm, and are joined by a whole army of intelligent young ladies, who, with sketch-books and easels, turn out Cromer beaches, Cromer mornings, Cromer nooks, Cromer caves, and Cromer sunsets as rapidly as the copyists in Continental picture-galleries. But how few seaside places there are where mornings on the sands and on the cliffs can be varied in the afternoon by picturesque rambles in a district especially favoured for its flower-land and foliage. At the seaside elsewhere after luncheon it can fairly be said that “all that can be has been done.” It must always seem the same thing over again: the same sands, the same sea, the same cliffs, the same amusements, the same faces. How few holiday haunts there are where the beach and the boats are not backed by a flat chalky pasture or a treeless desert. People are planted on the sands, and there they must stay. Not so, however, at Cromer. Apart from a country containing almost every possible variety of English scenery, with here a bit of Exmoor and there a scrap of Cornwall; irrespective of the quiet and romantic farms nestling in wood and shrubbery within sound of the sea and of the breeze; of the heather-covered heaths and commons; of the country cottages with their homely, old-fashioned English flowers, as sweet now as in the days of Shakespeare; of the lanes and roads, bordered on either side by thicket and wood, full of ground game and singing birds, and playing places for the lively squirrel; apart from a district in which there is never any glare, and ever present a sense of farm-land and greenery, we have, in the immediate neighbourhood of Cromer, estates and parks whose beautiful acres are every week placed at the disposal of the public by their liberal and generous-minded owners. There is Cromer Hall, within a stone’s throw of the village; there is the well-known estate of Felbrigg, recalling the dismal story of the last Wyndham owner, who ruined a princely inheritance in hideous dissipation and wild riot—the Wyndham of everlasting memory, who entertained prize-fighters as his boon companions at the hall, and drove his horses to death galloping a coach between Norwich and Cromer. There is the beautiful park of Mr. Upcher at Sherringham, and there is Lord Suffield’s place at Gunton, all thrown open to the public on certain days with a liberality that extends to free access even up to the drawing-room windows. This is of course no slight privilege. In variety of foliage and richness of colour these estates, with their parks and shrubberies, are as remarkable as such show places as Tregedna, near Falmouth, with the additional advantage of an air charged with tone, vigour and freshness. We have none of the moist atmosphere and relaxing climate of the Cornish lanes and parks, where the ferns grow so luxuriantly and the blue hydrangeas flourish; but at Felbrigg or Sherringham the heather blooms and the beeches wave, and the lovely silver pine, with its greenish blue tassels, sighs all day in an air that braces nerve and sinew by its strength and its softness. What wonder, then, that all Cromer goes into the heart of the country on these welcome summer afternoons, delighted to vary the sea and shore with inland scenery from which the sea is never absent. There is little need for horses or carriages, for all these show places are within an easy walk of Cromer; but still, throughout the afternoon, the little pony traps with their scarlet jockeys, modelled after the Scarborough plan, drive up to that bit of Exmoor-like scenery at Beeston, where, on an eminence said to be a Roman encampment, but more probably an old beacon station, may be viewed the fairest prospect of distant sea and near foliage that ever delighted the lover of the picturesque. But there is one sight left before the evening closes in, and before, “with stars and sea winds in her raiment, night sinks on the sea.” That sight is a Cromer sunset. The day is almost done, a silvery tone is stealing over the landscape, more silent now than ever; the grey, square tower of the Cromer church stands out clear and distinct over the red roofs of the unpretending little village. The Lighthouse Cliff is quite deserted; no one wends his way to the grassy paths surrounding the white lighthouse tower, from whose summit a revolving gleam is cast upon sea and land. But on the eastern cliff, all who would enjoy a peaceful scene are found walking at the cliff’s edge towards Sherringham. There is yet light left for the harrow that is busy in the farm-land, and the labourers toil on in the fields in presence of the advancing shadows. “The low light gives the colour.” How true this is may be seen from the brilliant scarlet of the poppy in the ripened corn, and from the gay bordering of wildflowers fringing the fields and the cliff. A long line of gold and purple is traced upon the wet sands and the advancing sea. In the far distance a couple of lovers advance towards the fading light. There is no sense of melancholy, although the landscape is so very still. Some adventurous fisher lads are swarming down the sides of precipitous sand cliffs in search of the nests of the sand martins that dart across the cliffs’ edge and skim the fields. At Sherringham Point, sitting round an old boat may be seen a group of bronzed fair-haired fishermen that would be a welcome study for Hook. Lower and lower the sun sinks into the sea, tinging the sky with rose-colour and gold, until at last it is met in its descent by a misty grey cloud, and with one short gleam the light has gone, leaving only a roseate reflection over farm and field. There is little more to be done; the sea alone keeps up its ceaseless moaning; the fields and cliffs look chilly and deserted; people come up from the pier and the esplanade, and when the church clock has struck ten the best part of Cromer is asleep. III. POPPY-LAND. It was during my rambles round the east coast of England that I chanced to find such an exceptionally-favoured and smiling corner, a village so secluded and at peace, surrounded by fields already ripe for the harvest within full view of the summer sea, that it struck me some description of life in an English farmhouse at harvest time might be sufficiently interesting to many on their rambles, and to many more who, refreshed, have returned to work again. The experience of a holiday spent amidst the most beautiful scenery of my own country, of walks from village to village, of many wanderings on down and cliff, of life at watering-places both fashionable and dull, leads me to the conclusion that many a traveller in search of health and rest might do worse than change the restlessness and excitement of travel for the seclusion and stillness of an English farm in a village by the sea. Every succeeding summer people are never tired of recommending to one another some quiet spot where they can live undisturbed by the great procession of tourists; a place where a _table d’hôte_ is unknown, and the front door is free from the confusion of arriving and departing guests; a clean, quiet, homelike dwelling where literally you can take your ease at your inn. Never a year passes but some such discovery is made, only to be communicated to a few confidential friends. The theory is that when a pretty spot becomes known and popular it is spoiled. I must own that many such confidences have been duly communicated to me; but what has surprised me most is that the United Kingdom is supposed to be outside the regions of romance and retirement. From time to time it has been whispered in my ear that if I really enjoy solitude and fine air, scenery and seclusion, I shall find it at some “pension” on the Jura mountains, remote from the ordinary Swiss route; in the Maderanerthal valley, half-way up the St. Gotthard pass; deep in the heart of the Black Forest at Wolfach, where they brew excellent German beer; at Triberg, where they make the cuckoo clocks; or at Rippoldsau, where they take delicious pine baths for chronic or occasional rheumatism. I have been recommended villages innumerable in many a Swiss canton, inns on the margin of many Swiss lakes. I have been promised rest in the island of Man, and welcome banishment in the island of Sark. I have no reason whatever to doubt the good faith of any of my informants; but it must never be forgotten that each and all of these enchanted peace-spots can only be arrived at after hours of agony by sea, or nights of dusty torture in a railway train: yon have to get there with difficulty, and to return with fatigue. How is it that we so often turn our tired eyes from these green islands of ours, forgetting that we too possess forests and mountains and deep, dark valleys; that we have woods full of wildflowers almost untraversed by human foot, and hills of heather left to the birds and the bees? We steam up the Righi by a mountain railway to see the sun rise above the Alps, but never care to see the same sun ascending from the green sea that encircles our islands; we praise waterfalls abroad, and leave our own mountain torrents unvisited; we almost persistently forget that within a couple of miles of some of the most fashionable and popular watering-places in England there are villages, old churches, dreamy farms, flowered lanes, coppices, woods and miles of heather-land, that are as empty and untenanted as if they were far removed from the confines of civilisation. It was on one of the most beautiful days of a lovely month of August, a summer morning with a cloudless blue sky overhead and a sea without a ripple washing on the yellow sands, that I turned my back on perhaps the prettiest watering-place of the east coast, and walked along the cliffs to get a blow and a look at the harvest that had just begun. It was the old story. Only a mile distant from the seaside town I had left I did not find a human being. There they all were below me as I rested amongst the fern on the Lighthouse Cliff, digging on the sands, playing lawn tennis, working, reading, flirting and donkey-riding, in a circle that seemed to me, as I looked at it from this height, ridiculously small. In that red-roofed town, the centre of all that was fashionable and select, there was not a bed to be had for love or money; all home comforts, all conveniences to which well-bred people had been accustomed, were deliberately sacrificed for the sake of a lodging amongst a little society that loved its band, its pier, its shingle and its sea. A mile away there were farmhouses empty, cottages to let, houses to be hired for a song; a mile to the right there were sands with no human being on them, deserted cliffs, empty caves, unfrequented rocks; a mile to the left there was not a footprint on the beach, not a footfall on the grassy cliff. Custom had established a certain rule at this pretty little watering-place, and it was religiously obeyed: it was the rule to go on the sands in the morning, to walk on one cliff for a mile in the afternoon, to take another mile in the opposite direction at sunset, and to crowd upon the little pier at night. But the limit was a mile either way. No one thought of going beyond the Lighthouse; that was the boundary of all investigation. Outside that mark the country, the farms and the villages were as lonely as the Highlands. Not desiring to be followed, I strolled on, and, attracted by a ruined church tower, took a cut through the cornfields towards a cluster of farms and a distant village. It is difficult to convey an idea of the silence of the fields through which I passed, or the beauty of the prospect that surrounded me: a blue sky without a cloud across it; a sea sparkling under a haze of heat; wildflowers in profusion around me, poppies predominating everywhere, the hedgerows full of blackberry-blossom and fringed with meadowsweet; the bees busy at their work, the air filled with insect life, the birds startled from the standing corn as I pursued my solitary way. So great was the change from the bustle of fashion to the unbroken quiet, that I could scarcely believe that I was only parted by a dip of coast line from music and laughter and seaside merriment, from bands and bathing-machines, from crewels and circulating libraries. Walking to the cliff’s edge, I found a deserted sand; looking across the fields, there was no sound but the regular click of the reaping machine before which the golden grain was falling. It was just the time of day when an English farm has such a sleepy look. No one seemed about anywhere as I surveyed the farm buildings; no voice broke the silence. The men and labourers were far afield with the reaping, and the barns were ready for the first loads of the harvest. An old horse came to look at me, and put his nose over the gate of an adjacent field; the fowls were busy where the barley had just been cut; and on the grass plot in front of the silent farmhouse a deserted tennis net was the only sign of civilisation. The contemplation of this homestead, close by a ruined church tower, the solitude of its surroundings, the silence of the scene, suggested the charm of country life. As the old song has it, “I said, if there’s peace to be found in the world, The heart that is humble might hope for it here.” But it was no use applying for lodgings or farmhouse accommodation in such a place as this; if I was to be housed anywhere, it must be in a place of quite another pattern. So I pursued my journey in a contented frame of mind in the direction of the village. Even the village itself contained few signs of the stir of human life. A small number of children, released from school, were resting from the sun under the shade of the roadside hedge; a cart waited at the door of the village inn; but not a face was to be seen at any cottage window; the fishermen were away trawling in the North Sea, and there was uncommonly little trade at the village shop set back in a garden full of homely cottage flowers. At last my patience was rewarded. Half a mile beyond the deserted village, at a bend of the road under the shadow of the windmill, there was presented to my sight what appeared to be a very cosy spot. It was one of those farmhouses which is an exact reproduction of the cottage that all children are set to draw when they begin their first lesson. A little red-brick house with three white windows on the first floor, a little white door in the middle, a window at either side, and a stack of chimneys at each end of the cottage. The house was divided from the road by a white gate and palings, and in front of it was a garden brilliant with flowers. I could not resist the temptation to lean over the white gate and contemplate so peaceful a scene. On the right of the gate was a bright bed of yellow evening primrose; on the left was a kitchen garden divided from the circular plot by rose trees, and in the middle was a perfect holiday ground for bees, a brilliant bed made up of geranium, calceolaria, phlox, clarksia, and French marigold. This was evidently the miller’s house, for it was not fifty yards from the slope of cornfield that was topped by the windmill; and here I thought I might venture to suggest the desired accommodation which had been everywhere denied me at the adjacent seaside town. My question was met with that natural courtesy and cheerfulness that seem to be characteristic of the county of Norfolk. I may pause here to remark upon a most pleasant feature of country life in this hospitable district. You never pass along the road, morning, noon or night, without being treated to a cheery greeting; it is either a good-morning or a good-night, a chat about the weather or the crops, a bow from the lads, or a curtsey from the lasses, as the stranger threads his way among the Norfolk lanes. I never felt more at home or was made more welcome than I have been in East Anglia. These things seem small and immaterial, but life goes along somehow pleasanter when the labourer trudging to his toil in the morning can exchange greetings with his neighbour, and when at nightfall a gruff “Good-night” comes out of the darkness of the road as people pass on their way homewards. “Could I be allowed a lodging for a few days?” “Indeed you could,” was the answer of the miller’s daughter, who opened the hospitable doors of the farmhouse that sunny morning. The family that had occupied the house all the summer had just gone away, and father would be delighted to have me as a temporary tenant. I was told that father would not quarrel about terms; that the fare at the farm was simple enough, but that every one would do their best for me; that I could come in at once—that very night if I liked, for all the rooms were ready, and that father was the possessor of a fast pony and a basket chaise, quite strong enough to bring me over with my traps whenever I cared to order it. Need I say I closed with the offer at once. A farmhouse within two fields of the sea, a garden full of flowers and fruit, a bedroom spotlessly clean, with a full view of the windmill and the cornfields, a sitting-room full of old oak and old-fashioned furniture, country lanes bright with poppies and the wild Michaelmas daisy, not a sound but the drone of the bees in the flower-beds and the busy presence of insect life, a hospitable host glad to welcome me, and a civil little daughter determined to make me comfortable, early to bed and early to rise—these were some of the advantages held out in prospect to me. Many a time I have crossed the Channel and travelled many a weary mile in search of some such peace as was here ready to hand in my native land. How far my ideas were fulfilled, and how pleasant holiday life can become in such a retreat, you shall see presently. IV. A DAY IN POPPY-LAND. The honest miller who lived in the farm by the sea was as good as his word. The wind was slack, and the corn around his little homestead scarcely cut, so he duly presented himself with the basket-carriage and the fast-trotting pony to fetch me away from the monotonous existence of a seaside resort to the more simple pleasures of a sunny country life. We can do original things in these primitive parts; and so it did not seem at all odd to the inhabitants of the seaside village already pretending to be fashionable to see a dusty miller conveying his guest to his distant home. It was just the evening for a drive in the country: the sun had set, the bright, clear flame of the lighthouse flashed now to sea and now across the peaceful country, the yellow evening primrose was closed in the cottage gardens, and the last waggons laden with sheaves were coming home to the barns from the fields. I left my seaside friends as I had found them, doing precisely the same thing with monotonous regularity. There was a moon in the heavens, acres and acres of woodland within an easy walk of the hotels and lodging-houses, cliffs to climb although the day was done, and yet no one ventured to depart from the monotony of the orthodox seaside programme. They had done their sands, done their cliff, called for their letters, read their newspaper, eaten their accustomed meals; and now there was nothing to be accomplished except to walk on a wooden pier and to listen to the music of an active but not very distinguished band. “If you are not in a hurry for time, I can take you a pretty drive to the mill,” observed my host, as he allowed the old pony clearly to see that he was on his way homewards; and the worthy miller was right. We took a road that led through a wood, not quite deserted yet by the light, and passed one of the show cottages of the district, a gabled pleasaunce with a rustic porch, built in a hollowed clearance of some noble trees, and now showing an added charm owing to the lights in the latticed windows. If the old mill farm looked homely enough in the full glare of the midday sun, with a bright light upon the flower-beds, and the business of the day, such as it was, in full swing, you can imagine the hospitable look of it as we drove up to the white rustic gate and saw through an open window a supper table spread with a fair white linen cloth, candles lighted, and vases of wildflowers for simple decoration. It was just the room in which such a table should have been arranged. The furniture was of old solid oak of antique pattern; a combined chest of drawers and escritoire contained the odd books that seemed to have been left by successive reading parties: religion and classics hopelessly mixed, Ovid side by side with Baxter’s sermons, and theological dissertations in friendly companionship with Todhunter’s Algebra. For pictures there were the coloured illustrations from many a Christmas number of the _Illustrated London News_ and the _Graphic_, framed by the miller during his winter evenings, some German reproductions of Raffaelle’s cartoons, and a wonderful series of coloured plates representing the virtues of a temperate man contrasted with the wretched career of a drunkard, on the true Hogarthian model. The little drawing-room on the other side of the entrance door was an apartment evidently held in greater respect, and even reverence. It smelt of lavender, and was spotlessly clean; the horsehair sofa was an imposing piece of furniture, the carpet had evidently been a study in green and gold, flowers had been placed in every corner of the room, photographs of the miller’s family and ancestors hung upon the walls, together with more religious prints, coloured and plain; and on a special table in the corner of the room lay in state the huge family Bible. The miller’s house, though compact and regular in front, was roomy at the rear, and capable of holding a decent-sized family of children and nurses, if their parents were sensible enough to bring them here instead of into stuffy, unwholesome lodgings. As for my bedroom, it was almost wholly occupied by a comfortable old-fashioned tent bedstead; but it looked to the front—a south-west aspect—and the road was lost in the interval between the miller’s garden and the acres of ripe corn on the slope of the mill hill. “Could I eat eggs and bacon?” was the modest request, as the miller’s daughter uncovered a smoking dish and pointed to the farmhouse bread and fresh butter. What could I not have eaten here, so admirably contrasted as it all was in its homeliness and comfort with the very undesirable food, the second-hand _table d’hôte_, the inevitable discomfort of crowded hotels and hurried waiters, which I had exchanged for this elysium. And maybe I could enjoy also, after this frugal and wholesome supper, leaning over the white garden gate and looking up to the sails of the silent mill, that last evening pipe that always seems sweeter in the country air, and prepares the holiday-maker for a good seven hours of unbroken rest. So grateful was the rest, indeed, that it was soon evident that further sleep was impossible after seven o’clock in the morning. The prospect of a good breeze had stirred the miller early to set the sails going, and begin on the new corn which had already come up from the fields. The first farm waggons were soon passing the miller’s gate, and the pigeons were calling under the eaves of the country cottage. But the chance of a bathe in the sea was the first consideration. Two fields led on to the edge of the cliff, and a circuitous path down the sandy face of it took me safely down to the utterly deserted beach. Here there was a chance of a swim such as bathers seldom find. Three miles along the coast it would have been necessary to wait in turn for a bathing-machine, to bribe the proprietor for preference, and to be strictly confined to the very proper regulations made at such places. But what a change here! Had I been cast on a desert island I could not have been more alone. Not a human being on the cliff, not a house or cottage to be seen, not a footfall on the beach, a cave to use as a dressing-room, and mile after mile of virgin sand, unsoiled by stone or pebble, to run upon in the sun and in the breeze after coming out of the water. At ordinary seaside places a sea-bath cannot possibly be followed by an air-bath, which is just as valuable to the health and constitution; but here, in this deserted nook, I can honestly say that I have never seen a human creature since I changed my quarters. A bath of this pattern naturally leads to a breakfast with an appetite to which most Londoners are strangers; and after breakfast, at the request of the miller, I go up to the old mill to be weighed, to see a splendid view of sea and cornfield from one of the upper stories, and to be initiated in the art of making flour under the process that has existed for some hundreds of years, and is now only gradually dying out. For the first time for many weeks the old mill was going, the new corn was pouring in, and my host was anticipating a brisk sale for his flour, his bran, and his pollard, which he sold retail to his country neighbours. Here the good fellow had worked contentedly for many a year, attending to the entire mill himself, and often in the winter-time working morning and night in these whitened chambers and preparing for that rainy day—to him a windless week—when trade must necessarily stop. Standing, that sunny summer morning, with the blue sea before me and the smiling landscape round about, with the whirling sails rushing through the air, I wondered if these old-fashioned windmills, dotted all over England, could ever be utilised for the collection and storage of one of the forces that are in time to supersede steam. It would be decidedly an original idea to collect force at a country windmill, to pack it up on the spot, and to deliver it, carriage paid, by the parcels post. The next visit was, of course, to the harvest field, where on all sides they were gathering in the grain with extraordinary rapidity, owing to the general use of machinery for cutting and storing. During my visit to these districts I did not see a single farm on which labour was employed for mowing and reaping; and nowadays every farmer with a fair acreage uses his own machinery, and does not share it with his neighbours, according to the old plan. I passed an old man, a man of some seventy odd summers, sitting on a stile as he surveyed the harvest operations; and he was fairly astonished at the rapidity with which the land was cleared as contrasted with his own recollections, but none the less inclined to favour what seemed to him the “new-fangled method.” I have spoken elsewhere of the courtesy, and I might add the reverence, of the Norfolk labourer, who seldom announces his determination of visiting any place on the morrow, or going anywhere, without the addition of “If God spares me, sir.” And I might here note one of the curious harvest customs that must have come down direct from Norman times. When the reapers are in the field they are allowed, or rather it is the custom, to demand “largesse” from the passer-by. Indeed, the very same old French word is used. The phrase goes, “Please da me a largess, sir!” which I made a brown-cheeked labourer translate, “Please give me something to drink your jolly good health with.” Not only the labourers in the field, but the children in the lanes, ask for “largesse” at harvest time. The girls and boys, with eyes as black as sloes, follow the visitor with no cringing importunity, but a laughing downright request, such as, “Please da me a copper, sir.” The perpetuation to this very day of the Latin “da,” for “give me,” is as curious as the retention of the “largesse.” It would be possible to walk for miles around this healthy and hospitable country, without the slightest fatigue, amongst the crops and the cornfields; for here, as in Switzerland, the vigorous and bracing air relieves all sense of weariness. All the harvesting I have seen is done in full view of the sea; the crops grow to the very edge of the cliffs which so exercise the inhabitants by crumbling away, making huge gaps and ravines of sandy soil that are soon grown over by the poppy, the thistle and the sea daisy. And then, the landscape is so delightfully varied. Now you come across an old church tower, ivy-grown and picturesque, surrounded by forgotten gravestones, and the matrices of old brasses, the last relic of the parish church, removed, like the lighthouse, farther back upon the cliff for fear its foundations shall totter and fall. Now you enter a village, and, desperately thirsty after those breakfast shrimps or Yarmouth bloater, beg for a drink of water, not lighting on any inn in this most temperate county, but finding a curious old cottage, with an old lady presiding over it who has passed the last fifty-seven years of her life under the same roof, never stirring far from the village, and living now in simple content on half-a-crown given her by the parish supplemented by a share of the earnings of her grandson, a farm labourer, who has sworn never to marry whilst his old grandmother is alive. Of the temperance of these Norfolk labourers I can speak with experience. They do not, apparently, need blue ribbons or pledges to keep them sober. For the most part they drink water, because they like it and thrive upon it, and their potations even in the harvest field are very moderate. I have not seen a drunken man since I have been in the place, and have never yet passed a labourer at any time of the day without being saluted by him in a friendly fashion, and as if I a stranger were made welcome by the inhabitants. And so slip along with pleasant ease the wheels of a country day at harvest time. There is always something to see, ever something to be done. If tired of the farms and the cliffs, you can stroll down to the deserted beach, and obtain the freedom and space necessarily denied elsewhere. If the day is too hot for exercise, the nights are at least supremely beautiful, whether viewed from the old mill mound, watching the fields illumined by the lighthouse tower, or from the cliff’s edge, with what they call here the “fisherman’s moon” making a pathway of gold across the waveless sea. Such is but a brief outline of existence at a place where there are fields to wander in all untenanted, woods full of wildflowers that bloom unseen by human eye, cliffs that have no wayfarers but the sand-martin and the swallow—a sea that I have made my own, and a sand that no one else cares to use as a playground. There are no children here, though there are farms in plenty to take them in, milk and eggs and butter to feed them with, gardens full of vegetables and flowers—no, the children are all packed away in lodgings that are unwholesome, and are swarming upon sands that are crowded; there are no “sympathies” here, though there are cliffs on which they could rest all day without an interloper near them—no, indeed, the “sympathies” are proclaiming their affection publicly on the pier or esplanade, and dressing for their mutual satisfaction; there are no hard-worked fathers or harassed mothers here—no, they are wheeling perambulators on popular spas, and exposing to an astonished world the pranks of their unruly children. Youth and age, married and unmarried, take their holidays elsewhere, and have not yet discovered this Poppy-land, which, to state it practically, can be reached in five hours from Liverpool Street Station. Any one putting himself into a train at 3.30 might be opening the gate of the Old Mill Farm by eight o’clock, and by midnight reposing in lavender. V. A CRUISE UPON WHEELS. I make no apology in borrowing a title from a charming author who first suggested to me the pleasure to be derived from a carriage-drive through the villages, forests, farms and orchards of sunny France. What a delightful notion that was, to purchase a little trap on arriving from England, together with all the materials for a summer’s picnic; to camp out, to sleep out; to pursue one’s course, unknowing and unknown; to buy wine at a roadside tavern and milk from an adjacent farm; to be bound by no time, and to be fettered by no route; to enjoy freedom with the best of all companions; and then, when the journey and the holiday were over, to sell the travelling carriage, and come home invigorated with health, and with a mind stored with happy recollections! The next best thing to adopting the plan suggested by the author of this welcome volume of summer travel—an author who, alas! will no longer grace our light literature—is to choose some route out of hearing of the scream of the railway engine, far away from signals, points, six-foot-ways and red lamps, skirting the coast-line of Normandy, where it has defied the almost indomitable energy of the engineer. If it is not possible to hire the travelling carriage of the country, there is at all times a diligence handy in communication with the different towns: perched up on the yellow carriage among the piles of luggage, provided the weather be fine, there is no better way of becoming acquainted with the French peasantry and the peace of French country life. For my own part, I have not seen a railway for more than a week. I have not entered a railway station since I arrived at Trouville from Paris; and I should like to show, as briefly and as accurately as I can, what a pleasant cruise upon wheels can be taken, at a very moderate expense, from Cabourg, near Caen, to Etretat, or, if you like, to Dieppe, both within easy reach of Paris. This yellow diligence, or country omnibus, is a rough but honest conveyance. It is furnished with an interior, or coupé; it has generally two seats on the roof, on which the luggage is piled, and in some cases there is a hooded nook where favoured passengers can sit and converse with the driver, who is invariably dressed in the blue blouse of the ordinary French peasant. The reins are patched and very rough, the traces are of rope, and the white horses, whose collars are decorated with bells, are guided by the voice and the long lash of the whip tied to an old ash stick, as much as by the reins. Say, then, the architectural beauties of Caen have been studied, and that the start is fixed for Cabourg after a morning bathe in the sea. There will be a stir in the village when the diligence is brought round, and many a young gamin will volunteer to lead the bell-decorated steeds from their humble stable. The conductor is busy with his passengers and packages, arranging everything shipshape on the roof. Friends and relations and shopkeepers have come round to the cabaret to say farewell to the travellers. The old lady with the Normandy cap, who is probably only bound for the next village, is helped up with her basket; the conductor is treated to a final glass of beer by the favoured passenger who is to sit beside him, and then all is ready for the start. The driver gives a mysterious “whoop,” the long lash of the whip is cracked again and again, we clatter over the stones under the shady avenue and have commenced our journey. Over a portion of the route we have already travelled—Dives, with its historical recollections and associations with William the Conqueror; Beuzeval, with its humble casino and contented fisher life; Houlgate, with its flower gardens and romping children; Villers-sur-Mer, and its picturesque retirement; Trouville and Deauville, with their ceaseless round of gaiety and lovely sands; Villerville, with the unenviable prospect of mud and the everlasting smell of mussels; the avenue of apple orchards, and the delicious cool of overhanging trees along the whole road to Honfleur, where probably the traveller, stiffened with a cramped position on the roof of the diligence, will take the steamer awaiting him and cross the bay to Havre, the city of the thousand masts, the town of eternal farewells. An erroneous impression exists that Etretat can be reached only by a zigzag journey on the railway, changing half a dozen times, and being in a perpetual fluster with coats, sticks and hat-boxes. It is altogether a mistake. The diligence communication is complete, and at a little wine-shop in the market-place our yellow conveyance will be awaiting us at four o’clock in the afternoon. One is almost tempted to remain a day at Havre, or to go out to sleep at St.-Adresse. Huge ships and steamers are coming in and going out of port. The quays, with their shops of foreign birds and old china, are lively with arriving and departing guests, and strange with the sound of many languages. There is always a fresh breeze on the pier-head which ends the fashionable promenade of the Havrais, and we can waft a farewell to our friends left dancing at Trouville, the other side of the bay. It is deliciously cool as ever at Tortoni’s café, under the colonnade by the flower market; and, as it is the Feast of the Assumption, the many-masted town is _en fête_, decorated with flags and streamers, and gay with the constant passing of little girls in pure white, who have to-day made their first communion, and are tripping home from church like so many bridal dolls. But the temptation to push onward is not to be resisted when the diligence for Etretat comes cracking and whooping down the principal street of Havre, and begins to take up its passengers at the door of the humble cabaret. As it is Saturday and a fête-day, we shall be well packed, you may be sure; for the good women from Octeville and Hauteville have come into town to hear high mass and make their purchases, and if a corner is not found for them it will be sad work for the conductor when he passes through these villages for the rest of the year. It is just the evening for a diligence journey, for the sun has done its worst to-day, and the colour will be superb when it sets. The white horses with their bells creep up the hill out of the town; more and more travellers are picked up on the road; the conductor is forced into an uncomfortable corner, and it is demonstratively proved that the white horses want no driving, whilst the conventional _commis-voyageur_, who knows the road and is primed with gossip, monopolises the conversation, which ranges from the escape of Bazaine to the accident which has happened to Madame Doche on the beach at Etretat. The character of the country appears to be changing. We are leaving the orchards and the belts of forest which were found about Trouville, and it is clear, from the wide stretches of open country, that there will be cliffs, high grass downs and bold marine scenery at Etretat. We have, as it were, left Devonshire, and have arrived in Cornwall; and as the sun sets more magnificently than ever to-day, a strong, fresh breeze comes over the hills from the sea. But the country and the villages are eminently picturesque on this evening of the Feast of the Assumption. At Octeville the service known as Benediction is over, and the old priest, preceded by acolytes in scarlet cassocks and white surplices, is passing home through an avenue of assembled villagers from the old church under the trees. At Hauteville, where we rest for refreshment, at a humble establishment, half cabaret, half farm, the lads of the village, in their best blouses, are dancing round in a ring with the Normandy girls in full costume; the mothers, sitting under a hedgerow opposite, are singing an old song as they toss the baby; and the rattle of dominoes inside the inn is good proof that the fathers are enjoying themselves over their sour cider. So on, with just a peep through the huge stone gateposts at the French farmhouses set in a square of protecting trees, past villas and lawns and country houses, far better kept here than in any other district in France, until the constant passing of waggonettes and excursion parties and donkeys is ample proof that Etretat is close at hand. That guess about the similarity to Cornwall scenery was quite correct. A horseshoe bay, finishing at each point with jagged spare and needles of white cliff which has been cut by the waves into mighty arches on either side; a tiny fishing village, over whose head are high slopes covered with turf and sea-daisies, as at Tintagel; a deep shelving beach of pebbles, smoothed and rounded by the fury of the waves, which do not roll lazily upon shore, but come dashing upon it with a heavy thud, and hiss back again over the stones; a beach crowded with old boats, smacks, nets, spars and cordage; a Cornwall sea, mottled with purple and green, such as is loved by Mr. Hook and Mr. Brett; a clear sea, in which the spars and arches of white cliff are reflected; a dangerous sea, which must be studied and understood, or the bathers will be cast upon the beach broken and beaten by the surf,—this is the famous Etretat, well known to us all by the photographs of the sea arches, and beloved by the artists, journalists and authors of Paris. We have left the sand and come to the beach; we have changed from the miniature hills, scattered over with châlets and villas, to steep ascents of rock, to wind-swept downs, to battery cliffs and sheer ascents. Trouville is crowned with its Châlet Cordier, luxuriously furnished; but the Etretat ascent has for its decoration a little chapel dedicated to the Virgin, whose walls are hung with the votive offerings of the faithful sailors—not their dripping garments, as in the days of Horace, but pictures of smacks and models of ships—out of gratitude for some rescue from the storm. The contest between fishermen and fashion is not over at Etretat by any means. Fashion may build its casino with sea promenade, and may occupy one-half of the shingle with bathing-boxes and the drying of costumes; but the other half is devoted to the fishermen, who drag up their boats upon the beach and lay out their black nets to dry in the sun. It is the most unfortunate circumstance in the world that Etretat should have become fashionable. It is a mistake that such a humble fishing village should have been selected for the dancing and singing parties and midnight amusements of the French capital. Etretat can no more accommodate Paris than can Clovelly take in London for the night. The whole idea and meaning of this delicious spot is ruined and spoiled by the attack of Fashion. We ought to go to bed at nine o’clock at Etretat; but we are compelled to dress in fine clothes and dance for the benefit of the poor, or to go to the play and see Pierre Berton and his companions, of the Français, instead of enjoying the moon and stars from the ever-sounding beach. What a mockery it would be for Mr. Toole to play at Tintagel, or Mrs. Bancroft at Bude! How monstrous we should think it if round the Cornish coast there were erected spas and music-halls, and, instead of mounting the hills and downs to walk along the coast for an appetite for luncheon, we dozed all day at a café opposite the sea, and watched Finette and Alphonse tripping hand in hand to the bath. It is quite true that at Etretat there is not that rigorous rule about dress which destroys the freedom and comfort of other places, though there is an affectation in costume which would be despised in Margate. You know the flat caps which are worn by the sailors in the opera of _Masaniello_—flat flannel caps, of varied colours, muffin-shaped and without peaks. They are called _bérets_, and are common enough in the south of France. Here they are indispensable, and are worn with complete suits of flannel. There are _bérets_ of white, like the head-dress of a French baker; of blue, of scarlet, and of brown. There are boating coats, as we should call them, of the same colour. A man without a _béret_ is an exception at Etretat, and an ordinary wideawake is stared at. So all day long the authors, artists and journalists of Paris lounge in the casino, hang about the battery, and dawdle under the shadow of the fishing-boats on the beach. They will not walk anywhere. There are the two high cliffs to scale on either side. They are desolate, and the grassy downs are untrodden, and yet, by the Chapel of the Virgin on the hill, there is one of the finest seascapes which can be seen on this coast. There are excursions to be made to rocks and caves and landslips in the neighbourhood; but the wearers of the blue and scarlet _bérets_ prefer to remain all day wandering among the shingle and eternally talking or playing billiards in the casino. If Etretat were in England, far away from any railway as it is, and only approachable by road, it would be the headquarters of Oxford reading parties, the favourite place for honeymoons, and the destination of tourist pedestrians. In France, now that it has become fashionable, it is spoiled, and has been rendered uncomfortable for all. The small, unpretending inns would be all very well if Etretat remained a fishing village, and would be valued by a few visitors. Overcrowded as they are, they can content no one. There is no disposition to be uncivil, but Etretat cannot do what is required of it. It cannot supply food, accommodation or comfort for the crowds poured into it on Saturday. We sleep in attics, in garrets, in fishermen’s cottages, and over shops in the hot and stifling town. We get our breakfast and dinner as we can, and go into _table d’hôte_ in relays and detachments, to find cold and badly-cooked food. There are no hotels or inns facing the sea—they are in alleys or back streets; the character of the beach is destroyed by the casino; the bathing is positively dangerous to inexperienced people, owing to the heavy surf and steep shingle; the surrounding country, to be enjoyed, requires stout legs or a mountain pony. What, then, could have been the object of destroying Etretat? What was the use of introducing café life to a blue sea bay and a primitive fishing village? Why are these fishermen to be driven off the beach, and turned out of their houses made of boats, because it is convenient to smoke cigars, drink absinthe and gossip in one of the most picturesque corners in all Normandy? As for myself, I am contented to think what we should make of such a Cornish home. How we should love this sea of perfect blue, these cliffs of dazzling white, these downs and climbs, and daisies feasting on the sun! How we should enjoy lying down among these old boats and spars and fishing-nets, watching the long waves curling and sparkling, and then tumbling into foam and spray upon the shingle! How we should revel in the everlasting sense of sleep begotten by a roaring sea upon a stony beach! How we should stretch ourselves out upon the grass high over there by the Virgin’s Chapel, looking far out to sea while the clouds played tricks of colour upon the water, and watching the white sails away in the horizon! How we should value the peace of the bay, the freedom of the hills, and the shelter of the cliffs! But when on a glorious Sunday afternoon, all blue in sea and sky, all green on hill, I look down upon little Etretat, in the hollow of the bay, I see that Alphonse is still assisting Finette from her bath, and the sounds of music ascend from the Parisian casino in the Normandy village. VI. A HARBOUR OF REFUGE. It is at the close of a lovely autumn afternoon that I find myself in a great garden space at Hammersmith. As yet the chill of the winter has not arrived, and I am scarcely conscious of the first faint dead-leaf odour that autumn gives. The temperature is thoroughly delightful. The sun in London has delayed its appearance in the heavens until the late afternoon, but now everything about me is bright gold or fiery red. The long low light is shedding colour—now upon an arbour, crimson and deep purple with the shades of a fine Virginia creeper; now upon the finials of the tall Gothic building that shuts out houses and villas and civilisation from my view; now upon the varied greens and sad colours of the silent garden. The scene is silent and peaceful; but over all hangs a shadow of sadness. There are children playing about in this vast garden space, and there are cripples wheeled in their chairs under the trees whose leaves are trembling to the ground; there are old men working among the beds in the fading sunlight, and there are old women who have brought their knitting out into the air, and are enjoying the soothing stillness that precedes the oncoming night. As if to emphasize the calm that prevails and the peace that is predominant, I notice strolling along the garden paths various good sisters, clothed in the habit of a religious order; and while my eye wanders from this strange medley of youth and age, activity and infirmity, nature and religion, to the statues of the saints that are placed in niches over the doorways, and to the quiet cemetery or “God’s acre” that terminates the avenue, my mind grows confused with mingled impressions of English hospitals and foreign convent gardens. One picture of all others is instantly suggested—a picture painted by Frederick Walker, who died all too soon, representing an old almshouse at exactly the same time of year as this. The aged folks are basking under a red-brick wall, the sturdy mower is clearing the garden plot of daisy blooms and wandering flowers; age and youth, strength and feebleness, are delicately contrasted, just as I see them here, and the sentiment of the painter is irresistible. As I am suddenly introduced to this strange and noiseless scene, whether it be connected with almshouse, convent, hospital, or public institution, I can scarcely believe that a few seconds ago I was in the whirl and worry of the London streets—outside there so restless, inside here so calm. I forget already that behind the great building and the little chapel that confront me are cabs and omnibuses, and buying and selling, and dirt and drunkenness and despair. I am conscious of the roar of London, but see no signs of contamination. I see the cloud-wreaths of the distant city, but a veil is between it and me. When I entered at the gate and was admitted to the garden, the world was left behind me; there are no signs or traces of it here. For what do I find? Cheerfulness and contentment; a rule of order and of love. Young girls turned into nurses ere they are mothers; good creatures nursing the dying and the sick; a small army of aged men, full of petulancy and irritability and spleen that old age gives, led into contentment and discipline by some gentle sister; another army of ailing, age-stricken old women, some paralysed, and others wearied with the long agonies of bronchitis and rheumatism, coaxed into submission by a loving sister of charity; and over all the community a gentle woman, who makes music with her voice as she passes amidst her family, and calls down the blessings of young and old who are touched with the fringe of her holy habit. Where am I, then?—in England, or abroad? in a Protestant or a Catholic country? in days before the Reformation, or in the active liberal nineteenth century? in London or the suburbs? in the gardens of a private establishment or of a public institution? I am in the grounds of Nazareth House, where these countless years past has been carried on one of the most noble forms of charity that exist even in our charitable London. For over a quarter of a century a religious order in London has set about the beautiful duty of trying to give happiness to the very young and very old, irrespective of religion or creed. Starting with a small cottage at Brook Green, these good women went cheerfully about their silent work. By begging and by prayer, by the example of simplicity, devotion, and a blameless life, they gathered into one select family the children too young to assist themselves, the old people too infirm to be independent of help. Children of drunken parents, children of thieves and prisoners, children who were ignorant of their own parentage and shamefully neglected by those who had been paid for their support; cripples, paralysed people of both sexes, old men who had known better days, old women left alone in the world, gradually drifted towards the harbour of refuge at Hammersmith. As the need for such an institution became more pressing, the responsibility became more great. The good sisters knew—none better—the need of their harbour for storm-tossed creatures; they received more applications than could be answered, charity of a fitful kind became exhausted, and it grew necessary to feed the starving family or to scatter it to the misery from which it had been so recently rescued. So the sisters, armed with the sense of the justice of their position, commenced a series of house-to-house visitations, begging for broken scraps and discarded victuals—the refuse from the dinner plates, the untidiness of the kitchen, the stuff that many less provident people would declare to be only “fit for the pigs”; and with this broken meat they proposed to feed the creatures committed by Providence to their care. At first—but for a very short period—there were some who were inclined to laugh at the good nuns, who, in the habit of their order, drove a cart from door to door and begged the public of their charity to remember the young and the old who looked for sustenance in perfect faith. The thing was so new and strange to England that the visit of the sisters was occasionally resented as an intrusion. This occurred in the early days of Nazareth House, before Brook Green was deserted and the great place in the main road of Hammersmith was built. Gradually, however, prejudice changed to a certain sympathy; and now, thanks to the brave work that is done by them, there is scarcely a club, an hotel, or restaurant, where the good sisters are not welcome at the area-gates. All is fish that comes to their net. The outside crusts of the tinned bread, discarded after sandwich-making by large firms such as Messrs. Spiers and Pond—ever liberal in their charity to Nazareth House—are eagerly devoured by hundreds of the young children; and there is not an old ham bone or leg of mutton shank or plate scrapings which careless servants would throw into the dusthole that is not sorted and apportioned for the sustenance of the four hundred human beings who literally live from hand to mouth at Nazareth House. The English people laugh no longer when the sisters drive their carts round the allotted districts and knock at the rich man’s door. Never yet have they returned empty; and after all, as the good mother observed to me, “the Protestants are our best friends. We could not exist without them. The tradespeople are especially charitable, giving us whole sheep at Christmas time, and presents of good stores, flour for the children’s puddings, medicine for the sick; for, though we are Catholics, this is not a question of religion. We only want to make our fellow-creatures happy, and to do good as far as we are able.” This determined spirit of humanity is preserved in the whole ordering of Nazareth House. It shelters Protestants as well as Catholics, there is no proselytism or convert making; so long as the inmates conform to the rules of the house and are obedient, no questions whatever are asked; children of all creeds mix together; the old men do not discuss creeds over their pipes, nor do the fading ladies enter into pious controversial matters whilst enjoying a dish of tea. They are waiting for the end, most of them, very patiently and with much resignation; and as for the kind sisters and the “dear mother,” as they call the head of this united family, all who are harboured here at least recognise her good deeds and her pure life and the power of ministration in her, and strive to make her days as happy as she makes theirs. “We have no quarrelling here,” said the good lady, smiling,—“have we, Pat?” and she touches the shoulder of an old Irishman, who is proud of his power of cleaning up, and looks upon the voice of the superioress as that of an angel. “God bless you, my dear mother!” replied the bent old cripple, “it would be a poor return for all your visits and the sunshine of your face. Quarrels! No, we have done with that. We are all of us going home!” Let me follow the revered mother round the wards of this home of peace. It is the evening hour. All who have been permitted out to see their friends have re-entered at the stone porch and been greeted by the smiling portress; but the daylight still holds good, and we find the old women anxiously expecting the comfort of their evening tea. Some are quite bed-ridden, childlike again, but very patient—women of extraordinary ages, many over eighty, some ninety and verging upon a hundred. Their ages date from historical circumstances. One was born in the “year of the Rebellion,” another in the year of the great storm in Ireland. An old lady, active in mind though crippled in body, recalls the days when she sang in church choirs and joined in a service with Clara Novello; another speaks despondently of her chances of life, but also regrets the certainty of her leaving such kind friends; a third, speechless from paralysis, gazes mute upon the chattering circle. A tiny, tiny child has somehow strayed into the old women’s ward, and they are making much of the little one; and a poor light-headed cripple child is allowed to learn the discipline of kindly restraint amongst her elders. In another long room the old ladies are busy with their patchwork quilts, assisted in design and with material by a directing sister. There is a chorus of welcome as the “dear mother” enters, and all press forward for a kind word from their true friend. In every available corner there are signs of religious life. An altar, decorated with flowers and candles, is placed at the end of every dormitory; and at the head of the staircase a Calvary or grotto has been built up with ferns and rockwork, and has a pretty effect from the end of the long corridors. Here, then, is a picture for an artist. The door opens, and I am introduced to the nursery of the convent. A gentle-faced nun, with an infant in her arms, is surrounded by a family of laughing boys of all ages, who swarm about the airy room and play pranks upon the floor. They want the “dear mother” to show them the beads of her rosary, or to stay a minute and tell them the story of St. Roch, whose statue is over the doorway, and who wards off the evil spirits of scarlet fever and typhus and small-pox—that strange story of the saint who, catching the plague from nursing the sick, went off into the desert to isolate himself from his companions, and would have starved had not his kind dog found him out, and brought him in his mouth some bread to eat every day. The boys are as irrepressible as all boys will be, but they are obedient, and give very little trouble, provided they can destroy the toys that sometimes are left here, and can listen to the good mother telling them the legends of the saints. If it were not for this nursery at Nazareth House these poor children—many orphans, many more illegitimate—would have been cast friendless on the world, neglected, half-starved and ill-treated; but they are every one of them fed upon faith with the milk that some generous person sends every day, and with the crusts that are picked up from clubs and restaurants. The girls—just ripening into womanhood and almost ready for service—I find singing part-songs round a harmonium, or practising hymns for the chapel service. But among the invalid girls, rescued from neglected homes and hospital wards, I find the saddest sights of all—and yet those the most eloquent in praise of the cheerful mercy of Nazareth House. One poor girl has had both arms wrenched off by a tram-car accident. Another has no legs, both having been amputated; a third, almost burnt to death as a child, is so shockingly disfigured that it is a mercy the poor creature has some corner where she can hide her tortured face and twisted limbs and be safe from the ridicule of thoughtless companions. For here physical defect passes by unnoticed. The blind and the burned, the paralysed and the deformed, sit round in the same cheerful circle; and one and all are treated with the same tender consideration by the good sisters, who have little time for rest and reflection, or for that enforced idleness that prejudice holds up as a scornful example of the evil of such communities. Idle, indeed! Whilst I have been wandering about these wards and corridors I have not been unobservant of the steady systematic work that has been going on around me. In the dispensary, a sister—known amongst the old people as the doctor—has been making up the medicines from the doctor’s prescriptions; and she presides over a surgery that appears to contain everything, from liniments to lollipops. Down in the kitchen other cheerful assistants are busy preparing the tea and coffee for this huge establishment; and let it be remembered that it is made from the collected tea leaves and coffee grounds that otherwise would have been thrown away as useless. The sisters’ cart has just come in from its rounds. Alas! the contents are but meagre and insufficient to-day, for “bad times” affect Nazareth House as well as the rest of the world. Rich donors and friends are out of town; kind-hearted tradespeople, who are such true friends to this charity, find it difficult enough to make both ends meet; the restaurants and clubs are not so open-handed as they used to be; and I regret to have to confess that for some time past the sisters have had to buy meat for their family out of the slender income derived from the alms of the charitable—a necessity that, if persisted in, must eventually end in ruin. When broken meat and scraps fail, then Nazareth House must cease to exist, and the family of four hundred must go upon the parish rates. One word, then, about these rates, for on this subject I heard the only complaint uttered in Nazareth House. The air of cheerfulness and contentment was alone broken when I was told that a sum of about £120 a year is levied as a poor rate upon the good women who relieve the parish of an incubus of four hundred. They feed the hungry, they nurse the sick, they rescue the homeless, they house the outcast, they educate the infant, and they bury their own dead; and yet they are fined £120 a year for this consideration. This apparent inconsistency has never yet reconciled itself to the minds of the sisters, and there is just a flutter of annoyance when the rates are alluded to. Yes, the cart has returned, but very empty to-day; still, there is something. The children will get their buttered crusts, the old people will not be deprived of their sop, and there are miscellaneous bones of all sorts that will go into the stock-pot. Vegetables, bread, meat, scraps of pudding, bits of cake, half pots of jam, confectioners’ sweepings, butchers’ shavings, are all sorted out deliberately, and made useful for the morrow’s meal. Another door on the opposite side of the building is opened, and it is quite clear that the sisters do not object to tobacco where the old men are concerned. Here are the old fellows assembled in a kind of hall or common room. No able-bodied person of either sex is admitted, of course, to Nazareth House. It is not a hospital, but a last home. Children too young to help themselves, old women past work and infirm, and old men who have come to that evening time when they can go forth to their work and their labour no more, are alone entitled to claim the privileges of this charity. But it is astonishing what gallantry is elicited from the old gentlemen who, between the ages of seventy and eighty, are spurred on with a desire to help the ladies who are devoting themselves to their service. They hate to be absolutely idle, and only take to their beds when the end is near at hand. For there is much to be done at Nazareth House that even old men can do. The cart can be driven, the pigs fed, the potatoes weeded, the passages cleaned up, and some little odd jobs of carpentry can be entrusted to such as are not quite crippled by rheumatism or paralysis. But the old men are never so happy as when the “dear mother” announces that some visitor or friend has sent them some tobacco or newspapers for their common room. The evening shadows are closing in, and the day at Nazareth House is nearly over. By nine o’clock every soul will be in bed, and not a sound will be heard in this great building save of the passing to and fro of the gentle sisters to the sick beds of the patients, to the altar in the little chapel, or to the comfort of the dying. The bell has rung and the evening prayer is over. The last notes of the music have died away, the children’s voices are hushed, the harmonium has been closed, and in the darkened chapel the sound of prayer and praise for the blessings of such a home, its founders and its friends, are heard no more. There is still light left in the great garden space behind the house; and I find myself wandering once more down the avenue, attracted somehow by the stillness and the calm. I have seen all that is to be seen here, and observed the system; and in the distance I hear the roar of busy London, with all its fever and its fret, contrasting with this silence and contentment. Without are the waves; here is the harbour of rest. I stand outside a little graveyard at the end of the London garden, neatly railed round and adorned with many crosses. “And here,” said the kind superioress, pointing to this pretty cemetery, “we sleep when all is over. Here they will bury us when we are gone. Good-night.” If the voice of charitable London could have answered then, it would have said, I think and hope, “We will help you and your noble work!” VII. BRAVO TORO! A TRAGEDY IN THREE ACTS. It is Sunday morning in Madrid. I am wakened by a hundred bells from as many Spanish steeples calling the faithful to their duties; and I look down from a balcony commanding the famous Puerta del Sol, and survey the scene. The Puerta del Sol, notwithstanding all its boasted beauty and gaiety, is, after all, not much finer than an exaggerated Piccadilly Circus, with a few noisy cafés thrown in. It is noisier, more crowded, fuller of hawkers of news and sellers of drinks; more main street arteries concentrate here at one given circle. Here you have more gossip, more buying and selling, more flirting, more congregating, more lounging, because the Puerta del Sol is the very heart and life of this strangely discordant, unpicturesque and burning city of the plains. At the Puerta del Sol are the best hotels in all Madrid, the best shops, the best cafés, the homes of the money-changers and the bankers, the resting-place of the hawkers of fans and the sellers of news. Here Spanish maidens, accompanied by a mantilla-clad sorceress, step across from pavement to tram-car, and exhibit their ugly ankles, their uninteresting white cotton stockings, and flirt their fans; here in a celebrated café at one corner the heroes of the bull-ring assemble—sallow-faced fellows, with villainous countenances scarcely more presentable than the prize-fighters of our extinct ring, with their pigtails twisted into their dark, schoolboy jackets, smoking cigarettes everlastingly, and acknowledging the impassioned glances of the shop girls and serving maids, who regard them as a compound of Antinous and Apollo, and worship them as heroes of Homeric legend. But how different the scene from last night, when from the same balcony I surveyed the same scene with the gas and the electric light turned on! At what hour do the inhabitants of Madrid ever go to bed? I have left the conceited, over-dressed little children, with “rings on their fingers and bells on their toes,” pigmy little men and women in laces and silk stockings, and decorated with bangles and bouquets, playing at kiss-in-the-ring with their liliputian lovers in the Prado long after midnight; I have parted from these same uninteresting infants stuffing chocolate and ices and sweet cakes amidst tobacco smoke and scandal at one or other of the cafés at three o’clock in the morning. In my time, in the pleasant land of Bohemia, nights out of number I have sat out a good many notorious sitters up; but never in Madrid was I able to be a competitor in late hours with a Madrid child or a Madrid dog. The whole Spanish family comes to the café, from the duenna to the dog. The men smoke, the women flirt and make eyes, the children swallow ices until their little stomachs must be congealed; and when these miserable little urchins have gorged themselves and taken to racing and romping about the café, upsetting the chairs and tables, and annoying the contemplative stranger by tumbling over his legs, the dog of the family gets up on the deserted chairs, and licks out the discarded chocolate cups or munches the remnants of the sweet biscuits. At Madrid they sleep all day and chatter all night. But it is Sunday morning, and all is changed. The fathers, the mothers, the duennas, the darlings, and the dogs are all off to church. This is no exaggeration: it is a fact. There was a most pious dog next to me in the famous church of the Atocha—a dog who sat up on his haunches when the people sat, but who prostrated himself reverently when the silver bell was sounded by the acolyte at the altar. When the mass was over I verily believe that this devout dog tried to cross himself with his paw before he bounded barking after his mistress to breakfast. Was ever such heat felt in the wide world as on a burning Sunday August morning at Madrid? They say it is almost unbearable at New York in the same month, a city that is almost in touch with Madrid in the matter of heat; but I very much doubt if New York, that can give sunstrokes and heat apoplexy, ever equalled my particular August Madrid Sunday. The atmosphere is so dry and parched that the writing paper in your room twists itself into curl papers; your blotting-book is found rolled into a music-case; your slippers turn up at the toes as if they belonged to a Chinaman; your hair crackles, and your skin peels off. I did daring deeds on that Sunday, to the utter astonishment of the natives. I made my way to the Museo to have a look at the glorious pictures in peace and quiet, and without an umbrella! For at Madrid, mark you, they are not bigots or fools, and do not consider that the contemplation of that astounding Crucifixion by Velasquez, or the incomparable Holy Families of Murillo, or the glorious studies of Antonio Moro or Il Divino Morales, will send the inhabitants to the bottomless pit, or consign them to everlasting punishment as “Sabbath breakers.” But it was a risky journey, even at ten o’clock, from the Puerta del Sol to the Museo. I tried to start on the sunny side of the street, and was driven back ignominiously to the shade in less than a hundred yards. Once in the open, where there were no shops or awnings to protect me, I had to make a rush for a straggling avenue of dusty trees. I felt as if I were walking through a fiery furnace as I crossed the Prado to the picture gallery; but at last arrived with burning temples and perspiring brow at the darkened portals of the hospitable museum, incomparably the finest picture gallery in the world. At Madrid in the daytime all the houses are pitch-dark. When you get out of the glare of the street sun into the hotel hall with windows hermetically sealed, you blunder up the staircase like a dissipated owl, and knock yourself about in cimmerian corridors. The hotel guide and factotum was in despair about me. He disliked my originality and independence. I had come to Madrid at the wrong time; and it cut him to the heart to think that I should only see an indifferent bull fight. All the renowned _espadas_—Lagartijo, Currito, Gellato, Chico, Frascuelo, Gordito, and the like, whose most vile and cruel faces adorn the news and picture shops—were all off to the provinces on their tour; they were starring at Seville, or Bilbao, or San Sebastián. To-day it was an affair of amateurs: it was a bull fight for the common people. I could get the best seat in the shade for five pesetas instead of twenty-five. What, then, would M. le Baron do? This hotel factotum prided himself on his English and French; and the whole time I was staying at the hotel he insisted upon calling me M. le Baron! I could not make it out; it puzzled me. I desired to impose on no one. I had no false direction on letter or luggage. Why then M. le Baron? At last I discovered that when I arrived I entrusted my passport to my friend’s care, in order that he might obtain my letters at the post office. This passport was issued to me by Baron Granville, then at the head of the Foreign Office, and set forth that the said Baron considered that I was a respectable sort of person, and was to be permitted to travel in Spain. The imposing words Baron Granville caught the eye of the commissionnaire, who prided himself on his English. He thought it meant me, and I was M. le Baron accordingly. However, it did me no harm, for I got a good room, and was carefully looked after during my stay in Madrid. I did not risk any more experiments with the sun on my way to the bull fight. If I had proceeded _á los toros_ on foot, as I at first projected, I should probably have been a dead man before I arrived at the monster _plaza de toros_ outside the city. All the officials at the hotel came in a body, and, predicting sunstroke, implored me to observe the manners, customs and costumes of a Spanish Sunday in a carriage, and not on foot. I thought of my morning’s experience, and yielded; and so from the interior of a closed carriage I saw the gaily-dressed peasants brilliant in colour, the omnibuses, the traps, the trams, crammed with people on their way to the Plaza, that could hold over fifteen thousand people, all jogging onwards to see one of the cheap bull fights of the year. I arrived at the huge, ugly, brick and stone amphitheatre outside the city full early; and I was glad of it, for the assembly of the people in this magnificent arena was one of the most marvellous sights I ever saw. Peaceful and serene on the shady side, able to roam at will through the massive stone and brick corridors, close by the President’s box, I could see this huge flower garden of humanity, the brilliant mass of indescribable colour exposed to the light of a burning sun. No picture I have ever seen on the stage or on canvas gave the very faintest idea of a full bull-ring. The blue and cloudless sky above, the bright yellow sand in the arena, the brilliant white of the stone seats that look like marble in the sun, the glittering jewels in the peasants’ ears, the coloured kerchiefs and dresses, the thousands upon thousands of cheap, gaudy fans all at work at once, the shouts of congratulation, the songs, the hubbub of talking, the excitement and gesticulation of my neighbours, made up a scene that I shall never forget. They condoled with me for not seeing an aristocratic bullfight. But what Parisian dresses, or modern fashions, or hideous hats and bonnets of an absurd period in dress could be richer or rarer than these peasants’ costumes, that connected the days of the Moor with the cruelly unpicturesque nineteenth century? For my own part I think I was in luck. I have seen the largest theatres in Europe packed to suffocation; but for all the superb sights of congregated humanity, outstripping the Derby Day from the top of the grand stand, or a Socialist meeting in Trafalgar Square, or Lord Mayor’s Day from a top window of the Union Club, commend me to the fifteen thousand spectators who, massed in a circle, await the opening of the _toril_, or bull’s den, and greedily anticipate the arrival of the victim of their insatiate thirst for cruelty and death! The Spanish bullfight is a tragedy in three acts. Each ghastly act ends in stern, relentless and uncompromising death. Remember that. The bull, however brave, must die. The yellow arena, whatever happens, must be stained with the life-blood of a noble beast, bred, trained and pampered for the slaughter. The bull is the hero of the scene; he may distinguish himself and be greeted with cries of “_Viva Toro! Bravo Toro!_” or he may be a cringing, cowardly beast, and cursed with such uncomplimentary epithets as _seco_, _carnudo_, or _pegajoso_; he may be a butcherous bull (_carnivero_), or shrink from his punishment (_castigo_), and be hooted at as a goat, a calf, or a cow; still to one end must he come—death! Like Milton’s Satan, he is foredoomed, and without reprieve. His bravery or cowardice meet with the same reward. The destiny that awaits the bull is that of the shadow of fate overhanging the hero of a Greek play. Nothing can save him. He bounds out of his den the picture of life and fierceness and daring, the very embodiment of noble vigour; in less than twenty minutes he will be dragged across the bloodstained sand by his horns by a team of jingling mules, a mass of despised and execrated flesh, a dead thing baited, tortured and slaughtered for the amusement of a death-loving crowd. It is essential that it should be remembered how much life, animation and gaiety are attached to the initial proceedings of a bullfight. The contrast between life and death is absolute and complete. It is all promise one minute; all despair the next. The sun of the afternoon fades into the darkness of the sudden Spanish night. The Spaniards come to the bullfight smiling; they depart from it cursing. There is a murderous look in every Spanish woman’s eyes when she has feasted them on slaughtered bulls and dead horses. But now all is sunshine. Every seat in the mighty amphitheatre is full. The chattering and cheering are almost hushed, for excitement is at fever heat. The President, who has arrived with a company of friends, has taken his seat in the presidential box, when suddenly the gates facing him are flung open, and there enters into the arena a gorgeous procession. First the two _alguacils_, or policemen, superbly mounted, and clad in mediæval costume of slashed velvet. Short silken cloaks are attached to their shoulders, and their hats are of enormous proportions, surmounted by a crown of feathers. Between the two _alguacils_ are the _espadas_, or executioners, of the bull, the idols of the women in the crowd, the boon companions of the young swells of Madrid, men who wear on their backs costumes that cost close upon _one hundred pounds_, and who earn two or three hundred pounds a performance. If successful to-day they will be cheered to the very echo; the men will fling their hats to them in the ring; enthusiasts will throw cigars by the hundred; purses, presents, what not, will fall at their conquering feet—gifts so plentiful that they will be collected by attendants in a basket; the women will shower upon them roses and compliments if these well-made, active, savage-looking slaughterers will only turn a bull well to-day, or lay him at their feet with one fell thrust with the sword of Toledo! Behind the _espadas_ come the gaily-dressed _chulos_, the men with the cloaks, the active, quick-heeled rascals who distract the attention of the bull when he is endangering the life of an _espada_, or threatening to gore a _picador_. All are in fantastic and admirable costume, looking better and smarter than I have ever seen actors on the stage in the best possible representation of “Carmen.” There is no dinginess in this show; Augustus Harris could not do it better at Drury Lane. Behind the _chulos_ come the _picadors_, the mounted men with spears, who are to begin the tragedy of torture. Mounted, indeed, they are, but on sorry hacks, wretched jades only saved from the knackers in order to gratify the Spanish lust for blood. The _picadors_ have their legs cased in iron, and they are padded until they are almost helpless as horsemen; but it is necessary, unless there are to be as many horsemen killed to-day as horses. Each miserable steed, each sorry Rosinante is blindfolded, lest it should shrink at the first attack of the murderous bull’s horns. The poor horses will be ripped up and gored to death soon enough. There is mercy even in the Spaniard. He blindfolds the spavined and broken-kneed cab-horse that has to be slaughtered for the Sunday amusement of men, women and children! Whilst this procession is advancing to the President in all its glitter and fantastic majesty, can you conceive what is going on behind the scenes? The appointed doctors are awaiting the victims of the bull in the little temporary hospital; the good priest is at hand with the consecrated Host (_Su Majestad_) in order to succour the dying combatant. At the best _plazas de toros_ in Spain there is a little chapel, dedicated to the Patron Saint of the Bull Fighters, in which the combatants devoutly pray before they enter the ring for victory or death. When the company has advanced and faced the President a trumpet sounds; whereupon the President flings the key of the bulls’ den to one of the mounted policemen, who, if he be clever, catches it in his velvet and feathered hat. He is cheered if he succeeds; he is hissed if he fails. But this is the rule at bull fights: there is nothing succeeds like success. An expert _espada_ is kissed by the women; a clumsy one runs the risk of being lynched. Away rides the _alguacil_ with the key, and proceeds to open the den. Now the audience boils over with excitement. The success of the show depends on the bull. They are all advertised as the bulls of remarkable and successful breeders; each one wears the colours of his master; but the pluck of the beast has yet to be determined. Before the _toril_, or den, is opened, the various performers have been arranged like players at a football match. There are “forwards” and “backs”; each has his appointed work to do; the lives of many depend on the intrepidity or activity of one. The first act of the tragedy of torture is the one in which the mounted men, or _picadors_, are concerned. They have to prick, stab and irritate the beast with their pointed lances. It is not they who suffer; their miserable horses do. A fierce bull makes a rush at a horse, and sometimes flings horse and rider in the air. Down they come with an awful thud. The rider is saved by his companions, who pick up the iron-bound log; the horse is left to be disembowelled by the brutal bull. Though the blood gushes out of the blindfolded beast, he is allowed to struggle on until, stabbed once more with a horn, he wriggles his wretched life out on the cruel sand. “Never mind,” nudged my companion, a young American resident in Madrid, as he handed me his brandy-flask, noticing that I was becoming ghastly pale; “you will soon get used to it! I was perfectly sick the first bull fight I ever saw, but now I come every Sunday!” I had need to nerve myself, for before night came sixteen horses had been slaughtered by the bulls, their sufferings being prolonged by the attendants, who patch up their sides with tow and wadding, and make them gallop till they drop. The Spaniard is absolutely indifferent to cruelties practised on a horse, or, for the matter of that, on any other thing. If you express your horror that a horse, although destined for the knacker, should struggle and writhe before fifteen thousand people in his death agonies, the answer is, “_Ah! que! na vale nā_” (Bosh! he is worth nothing!). They laugh the more the poor brute suffers, and the horse very seldom gets the _coup de grâce_ before he is dragged out by the mule team and sold as offal. The second act is devoted to the _chulos_, with their cloaks, and the _banderillos_, with their barbed hand-spears adorned with ribbons. By this time the bull is pretty fierce, and darts after the _chulos_, who bound with one vault over the arena parapet. These men are as quick as lightning. It looks to the unpractised eye as if the bull literally lifted them over with his horns, so immediately are bull and man at the same point. Sometimes the bull bounds over the parapet too, into the space between the ring and the spectators. Then the attendants scurry for their lives. I saw one bull charge the parapet and make a hole in it, and, in returning, carry away a gate with his body. The _chulos_ having bullied Mr. Toro, on come the _banderillos_, whose art is to plunge a barbed spear in either side of the bull’s neck at the same moment; a splendid double shot is rewarded with peals of cheers. Poor Mr. Bull, with an odd hole or so in his side from the _picadors_ and the two darts shaking about in his shoulder, does not feel very well; his shoulders and flanks are streaming with blood. Some inhuman wretches put crackers and fireworks into these excruciating darts, and make poor Toro madder than before. Let us count up the excitement. The horses have been killed and gored again after death,—and a horrible sight it is to see a bull prodding with his horns a dead horse; the _picadors_ have been thrown and probably wounded; the bull has been both insulted and tortured, and is careering about the ring with bleeding sides seeking whom he may devour. So the trumpet sounds for the third time, and the _espada_ advances to the President. He takes off his hat, bows, and makes a speech, declaring on his honour, as a Spaniard, that he will kill the bull or die in the attempt. The _espada_ is armed only with a sword of Toledo and a scarlet cloak, or rather handkerchief, to madden the bull and stop him in his charge. The _espada_ may be an artist, or a sorry fool; he may kill his bull with one thrust or torture the wretched creature till he dies a lingering death; he may find the vital spot at once, or thrust his sword through his lungs instead of his spine; the death of the bull may be hideous or instantaneous. An artist like Lagartijo or Frascuelo will sit in the centre of the ring in a chair until the bull charges, and, slipping dexterously away, the people see their favourite safe and the chair whizzing into the air. Some of the best _espadas_ will vault over the bull’s head with a pole, and, getting away, will allow the vaulting-pole to be sent into smithereens. Some of these men are so sharp and daring that the bull’s horns in passing by them rip a bit of velvet out of their jackets. But _espadas_ are seldom killed; they have learned their apprenticeship and grown up from attendants in the ring. The _chulos_ are ever at hand to take the bull’s attention from an _espada_ who is in danger. But the bull must die, either clumsily or with skill. Either _procumbit humi bos_ with a mighty thud at one thrust, or he totters and quivers and rushes about with the sword in his back only to fall gradually to his knees, and ultimately to be despatched with the attendant’s dagger. The end of the tragedy is always the same: death—ignominious, inevitable death. The creature who was just now a lord of the forest is a wretched inanimate mass, dragged with cheers over the sand by the shouting Spaniards and the team of splendid mules, gay with colours and with bells. It is all over: the love for torture has been satiated; death is the end of all things. Anything more melancholy than the close of a bull fight at Madrid on a summer’s evening I have seldom seen. In this climate the sunset is followed by almost immediate darkness; all the light goes out of the heavens; the pale blue sky becomes purple. The colours in the arena die out; the fans are put away; the yellow sand is stained; the carcases butchered to make a holiday have been dragged out; the eyes that sparkled with love in the sunlight become hard and cruel. A murderous expression comes into the Spaniard’s face as he feels in his breast for his knife or dagger and gets him home; curses are heard where laughter reigned before. The bull fight is over, and the clear stars in the calm sky shine reproachfully over the bloodstained arena and the home-going inhabitants of murderous Madrid! VIII. A CELLAR OF CHAMPAGNE. When the good people of Reims determined, after considerable deliberation, to destroy their ancient fortifications, to pull down the gates of their city, and to employ the workmen, rendered idle by a disastrous war, on a public improvement as bold as it was judicious, it became the duty of commerce to extend the town and to decorate its waste places. A liberal municipality did much towards alleviating the horrors of destruction. Public promenades and pretty gardens soon twined themselves around the old and venerated city walls. Geraniums now grow where the old entrances once stood. The babies of Reims are wheeled in those curious blue-and-white perambulators about the ancient ramparts, and for the activity and youth of the place gymnasia have been erected where in times gone by men pointed their guns and sharpened their arrows. Still, for all that, it was for the sake of trade that a virtual act of vandalism was committed. Reims went on supplying wines for the world. So long as society continues to be merry, and whilst good-fellowship lasts, Reims will strike the key-note with its _vin de Champagne_. As there appeared to be no lack of gaiety in this wide world of ours, manufactories sprang up and blossomed almost before their time. Workmen had to be housed, storing cellars had to be found, caves were to be burrowed out, before the law or necessity was in this case firmly established, and invention attended to the requests of her excellent mother. Commerce, in the person of Madame Pommery, has shown the first and the best decoration of the new and extended Reims. Outside the spot where the old walls stood, beyond the new boulevards which have sprung up since their destruction, far away from the line of the young avenue of plane trees which marks a growing civilisation, stands on a slight eminence an imposing castellated building. Those ignorant of Reims and its ways might take it for the private mansion of a nobleman. The estate is provided with lodges; it is made imposing with a tower; it is decorated on this side and that with flower gardens and shrubberies, and from whatever point it is approached the idea of a dwelling-place is suggested. But this pretty castle on the hill outside Reims, when we come to examine it, only marks the manufactory of the Pommery champagne, and stands over the vast caves where are stored in dazzling regularity the interminable racks piled high with fermenting and fermented grape-juice. The only actual house in this imposing stack of buildings is occupied by M. Victor, the master or _chef_ of the Pommery caves; and although the decoration of the exterior is pretty enough, the wealth of the estate is only to be seen underground. The proprietors of the Pommery champagne manufactory were lucky enough to possess themselves some years ago of a deserted chalk quarry; and out of this have been constructed, with very slight additions and fortifications, some of the finest—if not the very finest—cellars in the champagne district. These are interesting apart from the use to which they have been put in this instance, for geologists tell one that in the very selfsame wave of chalk the submarine tunnel between England and France will one day be made. The ease with which these subterranean passages have been modelled, the solidity of their appearance, and their kindly disposition to the contact and assistance of brick supports, may well inspire the talented engineers of both countries with new hope and courage. It must be remembered that the maker of champagne requires immense storage room. The juice of the grape comes to him in barrels; it leaves him, after an elaborate process of manufacture, in bottles; and in those alone is champagne perfected for the market. This delicate wine does not require cellars in the ordinary and accepted use of the term alone. They must be deep; they must be spacious; they must be capable of maintaining a proper temperature; they must not be cramped, cabined, or confined, but lordly, vast, and, before all things, high. So, thanks to characteristic energy and a liberal supply of capital, the water was finally pumped out of the abandoned pit, the intersecting tunnels were made, the arches were shored up, the flaws and faults in the chalk were patched, the floors were simply concreted; and now, as they stand, the Pommery caves are the best possible example of the enterprise of commerce, and as good a locality as could be found for showing the general process by which grape-juice is made into champagne. When we have done admiring the garden, and the decorative devices of the outer ornamental walls, a wide door opens, extensive enough to admit a Lord Mayor’s Show, banners, men in armour and all, and the visitor to the Pommery caves is introduced to the first cellar. Although this is on what may be called the ground floor, and is rather a _chais_ than a _cave_, the enormous space is deliciously cool. It is, in fact, a vast hall; the burning sun is carefully kept out; the temperature is jealously regulated; the windows are high and small, and there is a sense about one of a pleasant coolness, and not of any shuddering chill. At the extreme end of the hall are the offices and the visitors’ waiting-rooms; but they occupy but a very little of the main space, which is devoted to the barrels of wine that are undergoing the necessary process of fermentation before they are carried to a lower depth and the bottling commences for the year. Into this place the casks of juice are brought straight from the presses in the vineyards, and in this huge Westminster or Guildhall of champagne stands the mighty vat or _cuve_ in which the various kinds are amalgamated and the wine of every year is made. I have endeavoured before to hint at this vital moment in the manufacture of champagne; but let it now once more be understood that the wine is not the growth of one district, but the product of many, and that the difficulty of the whole business is at the side of the _cuve_. A little more of the vineyard of Ay, a little less Verzenay, a dash of Bouzy, a suspicion of Cramont, a thimbleful of Mailly, and so champagne is made. There are those amongst us who pride ourselves on the mingling of a bowl of punch, and many a friend of mine is terribly conceited on the subject of the high art of salad-mixing. But think of the delicacy of taste required in this manufacture, involving the reputation of a great house, and threatening some millions of stomachs. This is tasting with a vengeance, when the practised palate can say long before the fermentation is complete that the liquor in the mighty tun or vat or _cuve_ is fit to be bottled, and is allowed to pass for this market or for that. The _cuve_ satisfactorily filled, the elaboration of champagne has scarcely commenced. The bottling takes place in the springtime: that is to say, this year’s vintage, which with my own eyes I have seen gathered and pressed, and which I have this autumn tasted in its cloying and saccharine state before going into the cask, will not be sufficiently fermented and fit for the _cuve_ until the spring. Once the wine has passed the test, it is temporarily bottled, corked roughly, and strapped about with a stout iron ligature. The wine has fermented in the cask, and will continue to do so. Every single one out of these millions of bottles of champagne, in their preparatory state, must necessarily contain a thick muddy deposit; and the art from this point is to coagulate the sediment, to twist it and turn it until it forms into a ball, and eventually to get it up to the top of the bottle, so that it may be expelled with a bang when the temporary cork is taken out and the proper one is adjusted. This gradual coagulation and expulsion of the sediment is what may be called the conjuring trick of champagne-making. You will imagine, of course, that the bottles already placed in rack are allowed to settle, and then subjected to a process of gentle turning by machinery. Not a bit of it. Every single one that is made is twisted day after day by the human hand. No more delicate and gradual motion than this can be discovered. Think of the labour of this process. It is the duty of one person to go round the cellars, cave after cave and bin after bin, and to give every bottle a gentle wriggle, the turn of yesterday having been accurately marked at the foot in chalk. I asked in amazement if the individual to whom this hideously monotonous task was entrusted was not mad or suffering from incipient softening of the brain. Dazed as I was with these multitudinous piles, I marvelled how any one could be found to undertake the task without some relief; but my accomplished guide, M. Vasnier, the leading spirit and artistic motive power in this celebrated firm, satisfied my scruples by showing me the twister-in-chief, and assuring me that, far from being mad, he was particularly fond of his duty, which he had never left for years, and was, moreover, particularly sensitive and jealous of the slightest interference. In fact, he took a pride in the millions of his children, he grieved when rapid fermentation smashed one of them into fragments, and he could only be consoled for the departure of twisted and perfect bottles by the knowledge of the approach of many more cloudy, sedimented, untwisted, and imperfect tyros. In process of time, and with much gentle handling, the sediment gradually ascends to the top of the bottle, and settles at the base of the cork. Once firmly established there, it is expelled, cork and all, with a pop and a bang, and the bottle of wine is left minus its sediment, clear as a bell, and doubtless, as many will think, fit to be properly corked again and packed for exportation. But even yet the vital moment has not arrived. It is even too dry at this moment for English palates, and now comes the time when the sweetening liqueur, composed of many good things, is added to the manufactured wine. English champagne—or rather, not to be misunderstood, champagne for the English market—requires very little of this foreign ingredient—a small percentage; Germany takes its champagne very sweet indeed, and both Russia and France moderately so. All this requires care and judgment; but when as much liqueur has been added as is judged sufficient for each market, the bottles are properly corked and wired, all by hand, and are sent upstairs to be made pretty for the various markets. England likes, for the decoration of its joyous wine, gold foil, pink paper, rush cases, and wooden crates. Other countries are partial to waxed bottle-necks, disdain pink paper, and insist upon the conveyance of champagne in neat wicker baskets which would do wonderfully well for the system of garden flower and sweet herb incremation so ably defended by Mr. Seymour Haden. We have now taken a rapid run round one of the largest manufactories of champagne in Reims; and as the regal stone staircase is ascended, leading from the caves to civilisation; when the wax tapers are extinguished and daylight is gradually gained, the visitor is informed that in looking over the caves of Madame Pommery he has traversed no less than twenty-one acres of cellarage, and is once more told that every bottle of wine placed on the table passes through at least three hundred hands in its manufacture. The caves of Madame Pommery at Reims are always, through the kindness of that lady, open to the inspection of the public; and various good stories are told by M. Victor, the kindly _chef_ of the cellarage, who has been at the same post for over thirty years, and has a list of anecdotes almost as long as that of the names in his visitors’ book. The latest tale, which I will with your permission adapt from its native French, is so characteristic of our nation, and so immensely amused M. Victor, who told it to me, that I do not hesitate to relate it over again. A great broad-shouldered, muscular Scotchman had been shown over the caves, and had been courteously asked, as usual, to drink the health of Madame Pommery and long life to her brand of champagne, when our friend, flushed with excitement and towering above the hospitable M. Victor, addressed him graciously in the following fashion: “M. le Cuisinier” (this was his ready version of Chef des Caves), “your exhilarating wine has given intelligence to my brain, gaiety to my heart, strength to my legs, muscle to my arm,—and, by Jove, that reminds me that I should like to box with you on the spot.” “Whereupon,” remarked M. Victor, chuckling heartily at the reminiscence, “M. l’Ecossais lost no time about it, for before I could think where I was I found myself driven violently into the middle of that very chair.” I explained to M. Victor that this somewhat summary process is known in England as “hitting out with the left.” “It may be so,” answered M. Victor, _doucement_, and almost with a sigh: “all I know is that his strength was great; but, _hélas_! he was a good fellow, that Scotchman, _and the father of seventeen children_!” I refrained from any comment on that head; but left merry M. Victor laughing over the pugilistic encounter with a father of a family as I walked towards Reims, and left these wonderful champagne cellars of Madame Pommery. IX. CHILDREN AT THE SEA. When we hear so much of the watering-places of fashion, where humble fishermen’s villages are turned into Paris in miniature,—when we read of races by the sea, theatres by the sea, balls by the sea, of lace and feathers and diamonds and dissipation, of promenades by the beach and bands on the sands, of a holiday which is cut into so many sections of amusement, and, as such, not unlike a day in the highest season,—it is not unlikely that some one may be asking about the children. Where are the little ones? Are they forgotten at home in their lonely Parisian apartments? Are they left to their melancholy sport in the deserted Bois de Boulogne? Is it possible there can be room for them here among the petticoats of fashion? and what could they do, poor things, on the polished floor of the dancing-room, or among the little tables of the perpetual café? Let not the maternal heart be deceived, and let no false impression be conveyed by these descriptions of French seaside life. As for ourselves, we know how to mind our little ones. When pale and sickly in the nursery, when worn and weary-looking and irritable and cross, when the fresh air has been exhausted in the parks and squares, when the upstairs rooms are stifling and hot, the little flowers must be transplanted. Away they troop by steamer and by train, leaving London to those sadder children whose cry has touched the heart of one of the great poets of our time—away they go to Ramsgate and to Broadstairs, to Worthing and to North Wales. On the Yorkshire coast, on the Norfolk coast, at Whitby or at Cromer—the whole island is encircled with a glory of laughing children. It does one’s heart good to see them there, and to watch the change from weariness to life. Just as a flower, faded and limp, revives and becomes crisp in a glass of water, so do our English children redden and brown day after day by the sea. The thin little limbs become plump and firm, the tired little eyes sparkle again. The more they paddle and splash and play, the more they grow in health. Amongst the charms of our seaside holiday is the pleasure of our companionship with these children, and the delight of seeing that they appreciate our presence. Family ties and domestic love are strengthened by such associations year after year. Still there are occasions when, even by the seaside, children are out of place. At Scarborough in the full season, at Brighton during the race-week, at Ryde and Cowes when they are yachting, children appear, but they are there virtually under protest. These resorts are considered the drawing-rooms of the sea, and, as such, are not for children. They would not enjoy it; they would be better elsewhere. Nurse can take the youngsters to some quieter place; we will come and join them afterwards; it is so pleasant, you know, to be free from them for a little time—dear me! there are sufficient excuses for separation made by the good English mother. Not quite so many, I think, by the good mother of France, whose maternal virtues are hardly done justice to, and whose part I should like to take. I have journeyed with the children from Paris; I have seen them, and watched their antics, at Trouville. I have them with me here at Houlgate, and they are my daily companions on this delicious Normandy coast. In point of fact, French children go everywhere. They are never separated from their parents; they are the pets of the old fishermen on the beach, and they receive the first attention from the garçon at the hotel. Take the railway, for instance. There is no packing the children, with nurse, into a third-class carriage, whilst papa and mamma—for papa’s sake—go up higher, and enjoy the luxury of padded arms and cushions. In France it is “Place aux enfants” quite as much as “Place aux dames.” They travel first-class express, the whole family together, from papa in his Panama hat and alpaca coat, to Berthe, the nurse, in her snowy-white cap. A whole compartment is engaged, and into it all the youngsters go, from the stiff little boy in trousers to the baby with the inevitable pinafore and white-and-blue frock. Toys, bundles, spades, buckets, rugs, traps, babies’ feeding-bottles, and nurses, all are put in together, and they are disinfected by the cigarettes of papa during the entire length of a six-hours’ journey. Take the children at Trouville-sur-Mer, one of the most fashionable watering-places on the whole French coast. They swarm everywhere, and the whole energy of Trouville seems to be devoted to them. There are balls and dances for juvenile visitors nearly every evening at the Casino; foot-races and steeplechases are got up for the boys on the Trouville sands; there is “Un bain de Neptune” for the children close by the Hôtel des Rochers, where the boys learn to swim, hunt unfortunate ducks which are flung into the water for their amusement, enjoy mimic combats and tournaments in the sea, and are taught the first principles of diving. The children, instead of being kept in the background, are systematically brought to the front. The head waiter is more anxious concerning the little dinner of M. Edmond in the afternoon than about the comfort of M. le Duc or M. le Marquis; and if Monsieur Edmond relates in the evening that he was robbed of one course or one almond cake, François the waiter will hear of it, you may be sure. But look at the lovely fair-haired child—whom we have nicknamed Marguerite, so like is she to a miniature Nilsson in _Faust_—as she takes her place in the early morning at one of the snowy-white tables under the garden portico of the Hôtel de Paris. There is no need for her to call or make a sign. The waiters rush to the bidding of her fairy highness. They make way for the little princess. François brings up her tiny plate of bouillon with an air of supreme satisfaction at the pleasure of waiting on such a darling, and with a graceful wave of the napkin keeps off the truant butterflies which come winging their way from the roses to bid good-morning to Marguerite. No children at Trouville?—why, the children are literally everywhere! They run in and out of the open doors of the hotel; they tear round the walks of the hotel garden; they swing and shout in the garden gymnasium; they struggle and wrestle in the coffee-pavilion in face of the sea. No place or amusement is forbidden them. They romp in the tribune on the racecourse, and with the francs they have collected in a purse they secure stalls for themselves for the first representation of Croizette and Théo! Where we may not wander they are permitted to enter. They are welcome to the _quartier des dames_ at the bathing establishment; and when the actresses are rehearsing in the morning they are rewarded with a kiss, and are asked to take a seat in the front row of the stalls. And now that my steps have brought me to Houlgate-Beuzeval, whose praises have been written by an eminent French journalist, though it still needs a poet to sing them, I find the same love of children and attention to their every want. But first concerning Houlgate-Beuzeval, the middle watering-place between Trouville and Caen—more picturesque than Villers-sur-Mer, picturesque as it certainly is, and more lovely than Cabourg, a thriving and popular place a few miles off, which, when the railway comes, will threaten to destroy the popularity of Trouville on account of its freshness, its unconfined situation, and its noble sands, almost as fair and broad and yellow as those of Dieppe. There is a charming spot in the south of France at which travellers touch when bound for that rose-covered region where Nice, Monaco and Monte Carlo constitute a paradise for the healthy and a soft haven for the weak. This spot is called Arcachon; and here, when our pitiless fogs and cruel frosts distract the delicate, a harbour of refuge is found, sunny, warm, quiet, and healing by means of the scent of innumerable pine trees. Apart from its properties, so invaluable to the invalid, Arcachon is valued on account of its rare unconventionality and peace. No dress, no order, no rules, no time are observed there. You can seize a pony at Arcachon and ride in the pine forests; you can go to the sea-shore and embark for sea. Now, in appearance, in idea, in primitive character, in picturesqueness and in freedom, Houlgate is the Arcachon of the north of France. A charming row of picturesque villas and cottages faces a splendid sea; a broad, stoneless track of sand is the playground of the Houlgate children; the sloping hill at the back is decorated with a long and admirably constructed hotel, surrounded by a lovely garden of flowers. There are quiet, pretty and clean little streets at Houlgate, neat shops, kind people, an air of sunny contentment and civility; and within a stone’s throw behold the pine woods _à la Arcachon_, and the fertile prospect of fruitful Normandy. The casino of Houlgate is not like the sea-clubs of other places. The principal lounge is a drawing-room set about with tables, tapestry and flowers. The doors are of polished oak, the floors of polished wood; the sunshine streams about the apartment, and gives a welcome to the place. But the charm of Houlgate is its simplicity and its delightful informality. There are bathing-machines and bathing-boxes, it is true; but they are superfluous, and are not wanted. When I entered the village I saw the most curious of sights, such as could be seen only at Houlgate or Arcachon. It was that of a whole family which had undressed at home, and was walking barefooted and in bathing costume through the village to the sea. There they were, the grey-haired father heading the group; the mother in bathing-cap, with a white peignoir thrown across her shoulders; a crowd of children in caleçons following in the wake. So proceeded this family party past the little village shops, nodding to acquaintances, making purchases and what not, until they arrived on the sands and dipped in the presence of Houlgate. And I found this example was by no means exceptional. Plucking a rose in the hotel garden on my way down to the Casino, I was startled by the appearance of a dripping urchin rushing up the garden on his way from bath to bedroom. I fancied I was in a cool Ashantee among white savages. At the bathing hour at Houlgate the fashion of the place is wonderfully unsophisticated, and the place is as innocent as the children who are evidently so attached to it. Here, as elsewhere, the principal amusements are for the young. A large gymnasium is erected in the centre of the sands, opposite the châlet-like Casino, and they teach the youngsters how to travel on the velocipede round and round the paths and along the terraces of the hotel garden. Though simple and quiet, Houlgate, and its neighbour Beuzeval, are not isolated villages of science, set in a desert of despair. On the contrary. Even little Beuzeval, the old fishing village, on which Houlgate has stuck like a bunch of gay mistletoe on a gnarled apple tree, has caught the fancy and fashion of the moment. Humble, fishing Beuzeval cannot be without its casino, so it builds a glass house on the sands, where the old folks can chat and smoke and hear the news gathered from a torn and ancient newspaper. The visitor to Houlgate is no more lost to society than is the inhabitant of central Broadstairs. He is within a walk of Cabourg, with its entertainments, gay shops, gayer visitors, linden-shaded streets, and vivacity, on the one side; and on the other, he can lunch at Villers-sur-Mer, or, if he chooses, dine and dance at Trouville. But away at the back of all these Normandy sea homes are pleasures which, comparatively speaking, have been denied to the happy island of Thanet. I mean the inland scenery and refreshing cool to which one can turn for refuge in the afternoon. No burning waste of cornfield, no fiery poppies, no scorching stretches of chalk behind Villers, of Houlgate, or of Cabourg. All green, all cool, all wood, all shade, all wildflower, and peace and quietude. Here come the artists with their easels, and the botanists with their cases, searching for specimens. Here the ferns grow luxuriantly in the hedgerows, and the silence of the country is alone disturbed by the whoop of the diligence-driver and the jingle of the horses’ bells. It is no flat and monotonous plain, but a hilly undulating country, crowned with wood and brightened with sudden peeps of blue sea. Coming down from these hills and hedgerows to such a quiet spot as Houlgate, where the people, or rather the Houlgate family, are collected on the sand, all these will rise, and, like cattle or sheep disturbed in a meadow, they will stare suspiciously at the unexpected arrival. Satisfied of his harmlessness, he can take his seat with the rest; and you may be sure that any kindly traveller with a facility for games and a repertoire of anecdotes will receive his best and most unaffected welcome from “the children by the sea.” X. AN ISLAND OF SLEEP. It is a lovely August morning, and the Old Government House garden is literally steeped in sunshine. The sea-water in the great Guernsey Bay is as blue and sparkling as at Naples; the white yachts are sailing in and out of the harbour; idlers are sauntering over the lawn in white flannels and clean pink frocks. There is a dozy, dreamy air about our resting-place, and the contented bees keep up a hum of pleasure among the sweet-peas and French marigolds that border with colour the mossy lawn. A few yards below us, in the narrow, picturesque street of St. Peter-le-Port, you will find the early risers, some ascending the hill laden with figs and grapes and late roses, for sick or loved ones who cannot bear fatigue; others descending in laughing couples to do the shopping and the ribbon purchasing and the hair-pin hunting which seem to be part of the daily duty of a woman’s life. It is a merry sight, this morning parade, in the cool high street of Guernsey’s little town. The yachtsmen are buying the provisions, farmhouse bread and round tablets of dark yellow Guernsey butter; the indefatigable business men, who will never leave the exchange or the mart behind them, are calling for their letters at the post office; some are off to get shaved, others to lay in a stock of eau-de-Cologne and tobacco, both of which articles of luxury are dirt-cheap in our hospitable island. Charles, our indefatigable head waiter, who seems to know by instinct what every one wants, and who is a strategist and diplomatist combined, has detected in an instant how many visitors look like candidates for the excursion car, and how many will “run to” carriages. He has packed up several luncheon baskets for the fern-gatherers, who are off and away, basket and trowel in hand, to seek the green treasures in the cool water-lanes, and to select for the home conservatory specimens that all Lynton, Lynmouth and the Devonshire dells cannot produce. Our honeymoon couple has been despatched to Guernsey’s most secluded spot,—for our garden is too public at this hour for any demonstrative love-making, and the young things will be happier sitting hand-in-hand among the rocks of Cobo, lolling among the purple heather at Le Gouffre, or basking in some secluded cove where the blue waves wash the granite rocks, than staying here, the observed of all observers; for these two at any rate, in the bright summer-time of their absorbing happiness, believe that sympathy is immortal, and that “marriage” is anything but a failure. All are off on some expedition or another; the letters have arrived and been passed round the family circle; the scanty news from home has been discussed with varied comment; the newspapers have been skimmed over with faint eagerness, and left to blow away across the lawn and vex the flower-beds; the dogs of the household, a quaint pug and a black retriever, are stretching themselves lazily in the sun; and once more the question has to be decided how to pass the intervening hours between the morning and the evening meals. Thank goodness, the bores and the bullies have made themselves scarce; for, strange as it may appear, even in this restful spot there are specks on the sun, the rose leaf is occasionally crumpled, and the detestable grumbler makes his way into havens of rest in order to show his full capacity for insolent annoyance. This is the kind of cheerful creature who loves to get up at six o’clock in the morning, to shout, scream and claim attention by keeping his irritating finger on the electric bell until it is answered. This is the man who brings with him a couple of friends even more intolerant and insolent than himself, who love to carry on a conversation in a dominant key, shouting through the walls of their various bedrooms, waking up everybody in the corridor to inform us of the utterly uninteresting fact that Jack is going to bathe, and Jim is off to Jersey, and Harry has had a bad night, and that George feels “a bit chippy, poor old chap,” followed by roars of hoarse laughter and alternate bullyings of the patient “boots” or the indefatigable chambermaid. These hard-worked servants submit, however, to the questionable taste of the modern young man who roars for his bath at six o’clock in the morning as if he were in a barrack-yard, and screams for his hot water, with the adventitious aid of the electric bell, as if he were only recently released from the nursery. To the delight of every one these hectoring spirits have made themselves scarce, and we pray devoutly that air and exercise will reduce their animal spirits and improve their manners before we all meet again at dinner time. It is no use gazing any longer at the island of Sark over the way, the purple island set like a bright jewel in the sun-tinted sea: the excursion boat has left the White Rock long ago with its full complement of passengers, who, on these occasions, are freely permitted to speak to the man at the wheel, and to learn something of the dangers of the deep. Long ago the _Rescue_ or the _Alarm_ has headed for Sark, and by this time the picnic party on the upper deck, the nautical young man in the bows, the old lady by the funnel whose patent remedy for sea-sickness is to smell desperately at the skin of a ripe orange, and the amateur photographer, with his bulgy pockets full of dry plates, are safe on the island, and lost in the mazes of the giant fern and blackberry bloom. So let us go down to the port, where the sailors are sunning themselves, and see if one of them will not take us over in a roomy lugger. This is the way to go to Sark. Our “skipper” is a cheery fellow, full of anecdote, who knows every inch of the dangerous channels and every turn of the tide. With his aid we sail in and out the islands—great gaunt masses of rock and grass and fern, some owned by lonely farmers, others populated by innumerable rabbits. We are told that any disconsolate hermit, weary of life and sick of human society, can retire to one of these fastnesses and turn himself into an amateur Robinson Crusoe at the cost of £40 a year. Fancy possessing an island and safeguarding oneself against bores and business for a sum under a pound a week! A Channel island home, with a farmhouse, a cove, a boat, a gun, and an obedient Man Friday, would be the very place for a novelist with a good plot in his head, or a dramatist in possession of an exciting scenario. A picnic party is being held at one of the smaller islands within a stone’s throw of Sark; and as our little vessel comes in sight the visitors rush up the fern-covered hill and stand boldly out against the sky line, and swarm upon the topmost rocks, making a weird and impressive picture. The harbour of Sark is not an imposing structure, and there is something dark and grim and forbidding about it, even on the sunniest day. As we arrive the blue-green water is so clear and transparent that we can count the shells and the “blebs” of the dark seaweed, fathoms deep below; but as we mount to the white granite fortress that acts as a breakwater to the beautiful blue bay, we think rather of Sark in the storm time, when the great angry waves beat against its forbidding rocks and moan about its arched caverns and gloomy caves. Sark with its mighty fortresses of rock, Sark with its extraordinary silence, Sark with its sense of isolation and loneliness, inevitably causes a shudder; but the first impression soon wears off, and once away from the harbour and under the arch in the rock which makes a natural gateway, the sense of fear and awe is succeeded by one of genuine pleasure, for the wind has lulled, the chill has disappeared, the angry, treacherous sea, with its faithless blue eyes of bays, is behind us, and we have entered into a veritable island of sleep. It is midday as we ascend the winding road which wanders through hedges of blackberry bloom and under cool arches of green that recall Devonshire and Cornwall. There are some “shandrydans” that come down to the harbour when the excursion boats arrive; but to-day we must mount the hill on “shanks’ pony.” How wonderfully silent the place is!—we listen and listen for sound of human voice, for laughter, for the low buzz of conversation, but can hear nothing but the pleasant tearing of the pastures by the grazing cattle, or on the hillside the “murmur of innumerable bees.” There are cottages, but they all seem deserted; there are farms, but the labourers are afield; there is a small hotel at the top of the first plateau that welcomes the hungry and thirsty excursionist, “blown” after the first pant uphill; but somewhere across the cornfields and beyond the gorse-covered common there will be found, if we mistake not, hidden in a miniature wood, an old-fashioned hostelry that reminds us more of Switzerland in its situation and primitive hospitality than anything else has done in the Channel Islands. Having found a path across the fields, dived into the hollow of the wood, and mounted a circuitous and rocky path, we suddenly come through the tangle of the thicket, and find on the hillside a cosy inn, and outside in the sunshine a table spread with a fair white linen cloth and laden with the good things provided by the cheerful hostess. It is impossible to resist the impression of a Swiss inn as we arrive at the open door, with the cattle grazing round and about the house, only wanting the tinkling bell, the maid-servants stretching out the washing to bleach in the sun, and the morning meal awaiting the tired and toiling traveller. We imagine that once round the next corner we shall come to a peep of a snow mountain, or a waterfall, or a glacier; that we cannot be near England, or within miles of the sea; we expect to see on that white tablecloth outside the hotel saucers of mountain strawberries and rough pounded sugar, and coarse bread, and cheese made of goat’s milk, and a dish of honey smelling of thyme; but here at our miniature inn there is stouter fare—lobsters by the dozen, fresh boiled and sweet as the air that blows about us, great rounds of beef and mountain-fed mutton, and the beer of old England to wash them down after the sail across the bay and the walk up the mountain side. Strength fortified by a lobster lunch, and the nerves soothed by a post-prandial pipe, it is time to explore with what little energy may be left on such a glorious morning. Leaving the ridge of ground on which the hotel is built, and the shaded corners of the old garden, following a path that leads us higher and higher, till we come to the verdant gorge that leads down to a delicious bay, we find that Sark itself is a garden of wildflowers. All the paths are soft with moss and thyme, and are fringed with fern; the trees and flowery bushes flourish almost down to the sea’s edge. All the air is laden with sleep. Some years ago Sir William Helps, in one of his stories, described an island in one of our summer seas where a solitary man made and dispensed a beautiful blue compound that he called “sleep stuff.” Hither came the toiler who wanted to purchase peace, and the murderer who would buy oblivion, and the little child who required a surcease from pain. The summer island where the sleep stuff was made must have been Sark. We wander on along the grassy footpaths that give no echo; we rest amidst the heather and the thyme that resist the pressure. We sun ourselves on the rocks, or cool ourselves in the shade; but not one human voice is heard in this deserted island. Occasionally among the groves of green we come across a summer residence sheltered by wood or looking out to sea; but the boys and girls have gone out to play, roaming away to the Coupée of which every one knows, or to the natural rocks and caves familiar to fishermen and naturalists; but for us who wander there is nothing but silence. It is a day of dreams. Resting on a fern-covered headland and looking seaward there is a panorama before us of transparently blue water and deep yellow rocks surmounted by black cormorants, and shimmering distance, and white sea-gulls, that tell us how true to nature are the pictures of John Brett. If the seas of Cornwall belong to Hook, then the summer seas of Sark are those of Brett. Here one might remain for days and days in restful silence undisturbed, alone, at peace with all mankind. The hours slip away as if they were minutes, the sun sinks lower in the heavens, the light becomes more intense as it brings out the full glory of the colour of the wildflowers and burns upon the still green grass. “Row home! Must we row home?” This must have been the island dreaded by Ulysses, when he bade his sailors lash him to the mast and fill his ears with wax lest he should hear the siren voices and be lulled once more into luxurious idleness. For in our days also there are siren voices for those “who work and feel they work.” To-day, fern and flower, and sea and silence, and the lapping of the waves in the water caves, and the plaintive scream of the sea-gull; to-morrow, the roar and rush of the street, the theatre lights, and the persistently shrill call of the evening paper. To-day, Sark; to-morrow, the Strand. “Row home! Must we row home?” Yes, or the siren voices that whisper of a life of farmhouses, and days of solitude and nights of wild storm, will be too strong, and duty sink sleepily into the consoling lap of pleasure. The sea is bluer than ever now, the cliffs are greener than before; the evening light is gilding every rock and cave of the island, as we bid farewell to the little mountain inn and descend the dreamy hill to the silent port. The boatman is awaiting at the harbour, the lugger is flapping its sails on the waveless waters. Some brown-cheeked, jolly little children have come to say farewell to their parents. They all look like Oxford Fellows who are off on some expedition, and their young voices make a startling echo against the background of forbidding rock. Gradually Sark and its sleep disappear in the distance; still the children’s voices are heard across the rippled sea, fainter and fainter in the distance; once more the picnic party on the green island stands out against the skyline; one adventurous young fellow alone at the extremity of a rock, waving his hands, like some figure in “Paradise Lost,” shouts down a good-night from the lonely island; the breeze freshens, the dream is over, sleep is succeeded by exhilaration, and we sail into the haven all well. XI. THE VALLEY OF THE LAHN. Once more in sunny Rhineland—once more among the castles, hills, rocks and vineyards which have inspired the poets and musicians of South Germany, and are watched and guarded by the stalwart sons of this fair-haired nation. For this Rhine of theirs, with all its legends and all its beauty, all its in-and-out wanderings, its sleepy villages and happy valleys, one can well forgive the unpleasant demonstration of success that is forced upon the chance traveller. Arriving at our destination after a tedious railway journey by night and day—arriving unwashed, unkempt and hungry—it is not the most consoling thing in the world to find that not a single article of luggage has arrived, and that one is merely the possessor of a scarlet receipt ticket which has cost a third of the railway journey. But what care the military officials of the King’s Railway Company if the luggage of a thousand travellers is lost? Loss of luggage happens every day and every hour of the week. What care these military porters or these straight-backed stationmasters, with their scarlet caps? Not one rap of the finger. It is nothing to them that, with all their airs and graces, they are the representatives of a railway company which has broken its contract and continues to do so, putting all travellers to an inconvenience, so I am told, every day in the week. Relating this experience at the _table d’hôte_ on arriving at Ems, it was ascertained that all around me had arrived at the watering-place in the Rhine valley without one solitary article of luggage, and that every single individual who complained was treated in an arrogant tone beyond description. “What is to be done?” says the annoyed traveller, whose time may be wonderfully precious, as he looks at the wristbands of his shirt and sees that it is scarcely an hour to dinner time, gazing vacantly upon an empty, sunny station, and the tail of a departing train. “Wait, I suppose,” says the imperturbable official, between the puffs of his calmly irritating pipe. “How long must I wait?” “Cannot say. It may come by the next train, or it may not come for a week.” “But do you not think such carelessness very reprehensible?” “It is not our business; you had better speak to those who have lost your luggage, not to us.” “Who are they?” “I cannot say. But move off the platform; this is not the place for you. Wait in the waiting-room.” And so the poor traveller has to wait, and is buffeted about from pillar to post, thinking himself very lucky if he is not detained in Ems for a week without a change of coat or linen. It is ridiculous to expect sympathy or even civility from the German railway official when it is discovered that their much-vaunted system is at fault. It is known the passenger is entirely at the mercy of the company: he cannot delay to complain, to write, or to receive redress; so the officials strut about the station with their flat caps and smoke their china pipes with the greatest indifference in the world. However, it is Rhineland; and when, after much waiting, after constant visits to the station, after bribes and telegraphic messages and pestering, the luggage is discovered, the annoyance is forgotten, and you hope for better luck next time. They tell us this is a cockney Rhine, because two or three times a day some crowded steamers pursue their insignificant course at the foot of the giant mountains, and are soon lost with their smoke and their swell in the far distance. If by the term “cockney” is meant something approaching the vulgar and unrefined, it is difficult to discover the apposite nature of the charge. For the Rhine is so vast, the mountains are so high, the valleys so broad, and the excursions so innumerable, that the cockney traveller—the genuine specimen, with his puggaree and his sand-shoes, his alpenstock and his guide-book—is soon lost in space, only discovered at odd corners, and makes no difference whatever in the due performance of the pretty customs of the Rhinelanders, and is, to put it in a strong figure, no more detrimental to the general effect than a chance snail or caterpillar in a rose-garden. They are laughing and singing and making merry pretty much as usual in Rhineland, though the country and the gardens are more parched with the sun here than in England or Normandy. The old excursions are made—the old spots revisited. Cologne Cathedral is making giant strides towards completion, and elaborate scaffolding hides the greater portion of the external decoration. Bonn is lively with the students and English residents. Rolandseck appears to have been captured for the summer by an Amazon army, headed by a London Princess Ida. The hill up to the Drachenfels is not forgotten by the little German peasants, who run out of the bushes to throw laurel crowns on the ascending or descending excursionists; and as to the Castle itself, it stands just where it did, with the blind musician under the walls playing soft German airs on a concertina. But how has it fared with Bad-Ems, the romantic little spot on the banks of the river Lahn, up the valley opposite the castle of Stoltzenfels? Well, it has certainly turned over a new leaf in these regenerated days of suppressed gaming-tables, and has apparently determined to make up for the wild and reckless career by a calm and virtuous life, and, having begged pardon for the past, it desires honestly to live happily ever afterwards, like the good folks in the story-books. You remember what a hot, feverish, dissipated little place this Ems used to be in the old days, with its countless villas on either side of the Lahn river, with its baths and Interlaken-looking hotels and terraces and flower gardens. You remember how gay it looked in the hot summer-time, with the mules and donkeys waiting at the rustic bridge smothered in scarlet trappings, idly waiting till some one urged them up the hills to the Schweitzer Haus on the Baderlei, to the Forsthaus in the Lindenbach Valley. And I daresay you remember equally well how all our plans and arrangements for excursions were balked and baffled. If we had arranged to breakfast at the castle of Sporkenberg, we never went. If we felt it hot, oppressive, asphyxiating down in the valley, and longed for the breezes of the hills, in the valley and in the heat we remained. If a boat had been ordered, to row down to Lahnstein or farther up the valley, the order was somehow countermanded. Down below, on the terrace by the riverside; among the cafés and waiters and restaurants; among the tiny shops, artfully prepared in a glittering arcade of gold and jewels and rich presents, we lingered spell-bound by the presence of one hot pleasure, apparently greater than all. Throughout the day, although the sun was burning fiercely outside, and was parching up the flower-beds, heavy curtains of dark green fell down, and hid the principal room in the Casino at Bad-Ems. It was in and out this room and round about this room all day, from breakfast until bedtime. For this we left the hills and woods and slopes of the Rhineland valley; for this we gave up picnics and rides and river-parties; for this we suffered the obnoxious heat of a close apartment inside a house in burning summer-time; for this our mouths were parched and our heads swam round, our hearts ached and our cheeks flushed: for in this solemn room with the heavy green curtains two green tables stood in the centre of the slippery floor, round the two tables was a double ring of gamblers, and on the green tables were piles and rouleaux of gold and stacks of notes. It was like the loadstone rock that tempted the ships onward to destruction, dragging out their nails and sending them upon the waves a wreck of spars and ruined timber. How few resisted the fascinating temptation! People were there the first thing in the morning to see the croupier count out the money; they were there lolling on the sofas before the cloths were removed from the tables and the gas was lighted; they were there missing their dinner at the _table d’hôte_; they were there foregoing their exercise and health; for this room they left the views unvisited, the waters untasted; here at night they stood, though there was dancing elsewhere, or theatres, or concerts, in the other halls; the ball still rattled round on the roulette table; and the cards were still dealt and shuffled at _rouge et noir_. Perhaps, for five minutes in the day, a cigarette was smoked in the Casino garden; perhaps a respite was obtained in the afternoon for a stimulant at the restaurant; perhaps, at night, for very love of air, there was one stroll on the river terrace when the moon came out over the tops of the hills and was reflected on the silent Lahn river; but the wooded seclusion of Ems, and the picturesque situation of its villas, were as nothing to the green-curtained room in the White Casino. This was Bad-Ems of the old days. How different now! The effect is as if some one had suddenly opened the windows and let in the light and air. The heavy green curtains are looped up, and the huge windows of the Casino open straight on to the airy Casino garden. A fresh current runs through the rooms and corridors of the White House, and all the little world of Ems is out of doors, among the flowers, on the river and mounting the wooded hills. No longer do the mules with the scarlet trappings dawdle and bask in the sun by the bridge over the river. They are driven away by parties up the steep paths under the trees, and the Drachenfels. Laughter is heard for the first time in the valley of the Lahn. People will tell you it is slow and tedious, perhaps. They will relate to you how the invalids creep about among the mineral springs, and compare notes on the reduced size of an over-enlarged liver. They will induce you to believe that the monotony of an Ems existence, with its water-drinking at six o’clock in the morning, followed by a stroll, and its water-drinking at four o’clock in the afternoon, followed by a lounge, is simply intolerable. All whose ears are tickled with the French jingle of bouffe music will not understand the unaffected delight which compels the whole audience of Ems visitors to leave their ices and coffee tables in the afternoon and literally surround the orchestra when a string and wind band play a fantasia from Wagner’s “Lohengrin” with faultless taste. This love of peace, this absence of excitement, this healthy _régime_ of early rising and early rest, will not, very probably, suit all constitutions; though they are valued by all for whom such places as Ems are best adapted. You may be quite sure that the discipline of water-drinking does half the good. So here is little Ems improved and purified after its long life of excitement—a quiet, cosy, contented and calm country house, hidden away among the hills, and on either side of a silent river. No one can pretend for a moment that the air is either bracing or invigorating. It is hot, shut in, close and confined, and even the recent chilly nights and cold winds by day have been scarcely felt. But those who love warmth, and hate noise, may find in Ems an agreeable companion. The season, they say, is nearly over, and the amusements are somewhat limited. An excellent band performs twice a day, and a German company plays short German comedies and farces in the Casino. The sportsmen go out to shoot up the valley in the morning, and return with good bags at nightfall. But the gardens and terraces are almost deserted, and at half-past nine the little village is silent for the night. No rich dresses, no Parisian costumes, no eccentricities whatever, are seen on the gravelled path where one of the greatest wars in the world was decided upon as inevitable a few years ago. The small shops once devoted to the presents which lucky gamblers love to buy are now hung about with household goods and domestic linen. The gambling is at an end, the butterfly visitors have flown away, Offenbach and Hervé are heard no more within the Casino walls, there are no dances, and few young people; but the gardens are frequented by old gentlemen who totter about with glass mugs and discuss their ailments, the coffee tables are patronised by German mammas with huge work-baskets and much knitting, and round about the orchestra stand enthusiasts of art in coloured spectacles, who are lost to all things worldly and unæsthetic, as their minds follow the delicious melody of Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” XII. HUNTING THE OTTER. At ten o’clock on a burning July morning driving through the perspiring heat to the St. Pancras Railway Station; as the clock strikes eight in the evening resting on the boulder rocks of a salmon stream in Cumberland. At breakfast time conscious of the restless roar of ever-present London; peaceful at dinner in an old, wainscoted, low-roofed room of a border castle. Aroused from sleep when the day began by the barrel of a periodical organ inflicted with the restlessness of repetition; quieted to rest at night by the ceaseless rush of water over the broken stones in a picturesque bay of the river Eden. These were welcome contrasts. It was a change indeed from the cries of London, from the feverish persistency of business, from the shops, the crowds, and the burning pavements, from the red-hot streets and the lazy water-carts, to a sleepy hollow enclosed by forest trees, to a lawn bright with geranium and golden calceolaria, to an old stone porch festooned about with honeysuckle and sweet-briar, to the river walk with new-mown hay on the one side and the idle stream on the other, to the secluded charm of country house life, to laziness and laughter and lawn-tennis, to a promised land of lake scenery and salmon leaps and trout streams,—and all attained within the short period of time between early breakfast and late dinner. Few people are aware, until they try, what wonders can be done by means of persistency and a Pullman car. There is no time to think, and scarcely a minute for reading or boredom in the convenient method of conveyance as perfected by the Midland Railway. Normanton is reached before the daily papers are digested; Skipton is upon us before the first cigar is burned out; and if the traveller going North owns to dozing over a review as he passes Settle and rushes through the wild hills of Westmoreland, as he passes valley and fell and scar, whilst the scenery changes from the bleakness of desolation to the cultivation and woodland through which the Eden sparkles for many a mile, he understands very little of the first principles of that welcome medicine prescribed under the comprehensive title of “change.” There is an old stone castle on the banks of the river Eden at Armathwaite, close by Carlisle, which boasts of ecclesiastical, historical and poetical memories. It stands in the centre of a religious territory of hermitages and nunneries; it is another proof of the wisdom of the good old monks, who had a keen eye for the picturesque and an abiding love for the haunts of the salmon and the trout; it was the resting-place of an English king, and was duly honoured with the royal privilege of possessing a regal sword; it was a tower of defence in days of civil warfare, and in later times it was the home of good old John Skelton, the parson, who shocked some very straitlaced people with his reckless rhymes, but was poet laureate for all that, and was inspired to sing on the banks of Eden to the memory of the maidens who had played him false, and to the virtues of Lettice, his wife, who shared his rambles under the beech avenue at Armathwaite, who watched the evening lights in the shadows of the bay, and probably held a picnic with him by the waterfall of the celebrated “Nunnery.” But it is not on account of memories ecclesiastical, historical or poetical that Armathwaite Castle is introduced on this occasion. The fortress is dismantled, religious confraternities have been driven out of their settlement, on the lawn of the ancient hermitage ladies in embroidered aprons cry “love all,” as they compete in the lists of lawn-tennis; the royal sword has been taken down from the castle walls, and reposes in the collection of a curiosity hunter; John Skelton’s verses that have not been preserved in that delightful volume “Lyra Elegantiarum,” by the fastidious care of Mr. Frederick Locker, are forgotten; and the virtues of “Lettice” are alone preserved in a punning epigram on an old carved mantelpiece in the blue chamber, where there is a ghost, as befits all well-organised castles in this Old England of ours. Armathwaite is no longer the treasure-house of antiquity; it is the headquarters of sport. Here, when the sunlight is changing into starlight, when the heat is over and the cool has come, the fisherman steals along the banks of the Eden river with his fly-rod and his creel, wading about the shallows or perched on the eminence of a convenient rock, and catches a pretty dish of trout for the morning’s breakfast; here he may be seen in the deep and silent shadows, wading between the rocks and making his way upward to the Fall; and here, later on, when there are lights in the billiard-room and Chopin is heard from the open drawing-room window, a mysterious black boat is paddled among the rushes and the boulder stones, and the keeper in the stern plunges down his salmon net and secures a prize for to-morrow’s dinner. But, best of all, Armathwaite in the silent valley, Armathwaite shut out completely from the world, Armathwaite, which can only just hear the distant roar of the passing Pullman, and is a good posting journey from Carlisle, is one of the favourite meets of the Carlisle Otter Hounds—a famous pack, well known on the rivers of Scotland and Cumberland, and which, thanks to the exertions of their popular master, Mr. Steel, never fails to give capital sport and healthy exercise to those who follow when the note of the bugle is heard in the woods. Everything seemed to favour the Armathwaite meet. The river was conveniently low, the stream was fordable at many a point, the keepers on the various estates in the neighbourhood had reported the certain presence of many an otter: salmon had been found on the riverbank with a neat and clean bite taken out of the fleshiest part of the shoulder—for your otter is a dainty gentleman, who is only content with the best cut of the salmon; the weather was delightful; the hay was out; the wildflowers were in full bloom; the woods were shady, and the fern was green; meadowsweet and wild woodbine scented the air; and so, as good luck would have it, Mr. Steel fixed on an Armathwaite meet for the otter hounds, and hoped for a drag along the Eden. At first sight, there is something strangely inconsistent in hunting in midsummer. The cry of the hound, be he otter or beagle, be he ragged or smooth, is not usually associated with hayfields and burning suns. We do not look for the scarlet coat of the huntsman in the dog-days; and it seems little short of madness to go racing on foot along a river bank when the thermometer is about eighty in the shade. But theory must give way to practice in this matter. Those who do not understand cricket or lawn-tennis are ready with the same heterodox theories about heat and fatigue, and so on; but as regards otter hunting they might have changed their opinion had they been present on that July morning, when Mr. Steel brought the Carlisle hounds to hunt the river Eden at Armathwaite. Masters of otter hounds, like the rest of mortals, cannot do impossibilities. Having to come by train some miles from Carlisle, it was out of the question to satisfy those enthusiasts who wanted to be up at four o’clock in the morning, when the dew was on the grass, when the woods were wringing wet, and before the flies and gnats and other insects had time to be on the wing and prepare themselves for a violent attack. Breakfast time was quite early enough for the meet, according to the master’s theory, and perfectly accorded with the views of the good people at Armathwaite, who had quite made up their minds to kill an otter before midday, and of the idlers who intended to take French leave, no matter whether duty or circumstances permitted it. It was one of those faultless summer mornings which are sometimes given to us at the close of such a July as we have seldom experienced. The year was at its very best. The early haze of promised heat had cleared away, the sun was burning hot on the meadow land; but through the old stone arches of the Armathwaite bridge the river ran cool and clear as a select party of loiterers waited under the shadow of the trees at the end of the village for the appearance of the otter hounds from Carlisle. There was the course, clear and distinct, glittering before all who cared to follow the hunt—the river Eden winding its way under trees and red sandstone rocks, and through distant sketches of meadow land. On such a day as this, who could possibly object to a paddle in so tempting a salmon stream? who would grumble at the prospect of fording the river now and again? who would mind jumping from rock to rock, with the chance of sousing in deep water? who would not “up and follow” the hounds as they yelped along the banks of the picturesque river? There was scarcely time for meditation, for down the hill and through the village came the otter hounds, and at once, without more ado, they made straight for the river. There was scarcely time for exchanging a word with any one. It was too late in the day, and the sun too high in the heavens, to wait for hunting breakfasts or the courtesies of proffered hospitalities. Champagne cups and tankards of shandy-gaff would come better later on, when some work had been accomplished; but now, here was the river and there were the hounds, and the great question to be settled, according to Mr. Steel and his aide-de-camp “Sandy,” was, “Where is the otter?” A quick glance round showed that the master was here, looking uncommonly well and proud of an unusually successful season; the huntsman Sandy, a well-known character, dressed in well-worn scarlet, and with a merry twinkle in his eye, was of course here to cheer on the hounds with his familiar voice, and to give every one present the benefit of his vast experience; the two whips, looking as “hard as nails,” and in excellent condition, accompanied the procession; and the ladies who had left the breakfast table to come and examine the points of the hounds, who were voted by them “very untidy dogs,” were sadly disappointed at the absence of any preliminary formula, and at the sudden order of the master to begin business. The meet was a farce, for the bridge had scarcely been reached and the river seen when the sport began. In an instant the hounds took to the river. Away they went, these matted, unkempt, long-eared dogs, barking and yelping, along the river bank. The young hounds, impatient of discipline and restraint, gave tongue instantly, rejoiced at their release from captivity in the train, and delighted to feel the cool water. The effect of this barking and baying, this shouting and music of the horn upon the sleepy village of Armathwaite, was magical. If the Pied Piper of Hamelin had come into the little Cumberland hamlet the effect could not have been more strange. When the hounds took to the river all Armathwaite took to the river banks. Work was over for the day. The keeper rushed out of his cottage, the gardener left his flowers, the butler abandoned his plate-basket, the bench of the village alehouse was empty, and the farm labourers took to their heels through the woods. Lodge gates were flung open, a stampede was made over lawns and through flower gardens, and the most miscellaneous crowd ever seen made straight for the water-side. It would have puzzled any one to tell where all the people came from, or by what mystery they appeared like this. At the first halt by the salmon rush in the bay, and whilst the hounds are crossing the stream in a line, there is an opportunity of rapidly looking over the medley crowd. Young men in flannels and University boating jackets, heavy fathers of families in knickerbockers, young ladies without their hats and in simple morning gowns, nurses with plucky little children struggling at their heels, the governess heading a tribe of buttercup maidens let loose like young colts, and racing along the “home meadow,” all meet at the stile by the old water-mill, and as the check at the waterfall is very slight, and the young hounds are still giving tongue, it is clear that all must press forward who do not care to be left behind. Arrangements had been made for ferrying across the ladies and the children in the smoother water above the Fall, and for lingering at some selected spot to see the hunt go by. But the pace is fast to-day, and the hounds are not to be kept back. They seem to be on the trail of something, or in unusually high spirits, for it takes the master and the huntsman the best part of their time to keep up with the hounds. After a helter skelter race of a mile and a half it is clear that those who do not care to wade, or are unaccustomed to rock work and climbing, must be left behind. The master and the huntsman keep under the bushes and wade like ducks. Many of the more adventurous follow their example; but in places it is hard going, and the river Eden, though it looks so fair, is deceitful and treacherous enough. There are rock passes to scale that require a firm footing, and descents that remind one of that jolting pass coming down to the valley from the Bel Alp in Switzerland; and sometimes, as at “Samson’s Cave,” those who follow must scramble hand over hand along a smooth surface of sheer rock overhanging a deep pool, or have the mortification of hearing the hounds and the horn die away in the distance. The excitement consists in the variety of the scene and picture. Now those who follow are climbing and using stout poles or alpenstocks, now they are crossing a hilltop of heather in the burning heat, now they are pestered with insects and struggling through a jungle of fern, now they are paddling or leaping over the stones, now they are hidden in the cool of a deep wood, now they lose the hunt for a short five minutes, and now they are upon it again. There is no dodging across country, no waiting at gates or lanes, no short cuts or tricks of following. All who are with the hunt must be on one river bank or the other, and every now and then, when there is a short check, the scene is delightful. Then, as the tired followers throw themselves on the grass, the scarlet huntsman and the master, issuing from the trees, summon the wilful hounds back, and try some well-known hole or gully; and there is a moment’s pause. The pace has been tremendous; but, so far, it looks uncommonly as if a blank day stared us in the face. Again and again the music has been heard, but no one has seen the otter. The learned keepers, who have never come up so far without finding, look disappointed, and Lazonby bridge is close at hand at about luncheon time. A capital place for an otter is the neighbourhood of Lazonby bridge. The river is studded with holes, the park by the “College” is intersected with drains; and if an otter is not concealed here on this burning July morning, why, then no more faith can be placed in local report and tradition. It seems as if the honour of Lazonby were at stake. Mr. Steel, the master, is overwhelmed with information. It is not theory this time; it is fact. True that the woods of Armathwaite and the Coombe and the Nunnery have been drawn blank; true that the hunt has come all this way through the blazing sun without any consolation but that of exercise; true that the old and well-behaved hounds have hitherto kept a discreet and decorous silence; but here is Lazonby, and here there _must_ be an otter. Has not the parson of the parish actually seen an otter last night when he was out fishing with his boys? Was not an otter distinctly tracked less than a week ago below bridge? Have not mangled salmon and eels been found at the mouth of drain and gully? Why, of course, there must be an otter at Lazonby. There was an otter, it is true, but he is not caught yet. He was found, true to tradition, in one of the drains at the College, and his discoverer was a marvellous little terrier who follows the fortunes of the Carlisle hounds. A pluckier little terrier never lived than the dissipated and battered young rascal, who, the more he is bitten, the better he shows fight. His normal nose is rendered shapeless by the teeth of innumerable otters, and he is compelled to breathe through an artificial hole conveniently made by the teeth of his enemy; but these physical difficulties do not interfere with the excitability of this remarkable animal. He goes in anywhere, he fights till he drops, and when he smells an otter he works away like a machine into the hard ground with his fore paws and his battered nose. It was this terrier who excited us with the tidings of the hidden otter that was never killed. There was no doubt about it this time. The terrier had never been known to play his master false; and his perception was endorsed by the old hounds who wanted to tear up the earth to get at their foe. But it was all to no effect. The otter concealed himself where detection was impossible; labourers came up and worked with spade and pick in the burning sun for pure love of sport, declaring as the perspiration poured from their brows that they “dearly loved a good hunt”; the terrier whined and danced about the roof of an impassable drain, the hounds scrambled and moaned over a newly-made grave in a wide field; and at last, when there looked like a prospect of an opening, the time came for the otter hounds to go home again, and our crafty friend was left for another day, and marked for certain death. As suddenly as the pursuing crowd had come, so suddenly did it vanish when Mr. Steel and Sandy disappeared with their dishevelled dogs down a dusty road, and the “hunt was up.” Undergraduates, farmers, keepers, gardeners, butlers, men in knickerbockers, butchers, and miscellaneous sportsmen seemed to melt away as the master preceded his hounds in the direction of that land of promise—Lazonby. The Armathwaite division was soon scattered over the hills and in the woods; and although it was a blank day, still such as had enjoyed an Eden excursion and a Cumbrian climb must have agreed with the sentiment of the old song that, whenever there is an otter hunt on the river Eden, in Cumberland, in the rivers of Scotland, or elsewhere, “may I be there to see!” For when otter hunting is not fine sport, unquestionably it is healthy exercise. XIII. A PALACE OF PEACE. If I were asked to propound a subject for discussion at a debating society of sub-Alpine travellers, I think that, after reflection, I might suggest, “Why do people in search of health and strength go up Swiss mountains?” The answers would be varied and the controversy lively. “I think you Englishmen must be mad,” said a Swiss porter to me the other day, as we were resting after that burning pilgrimage over the rocky desert which leads over the Great Scheideck Pass. “You all seem to be well and happy; you appear to have got plenty of money; but instead of keeping still and enjoying your health and your coin, you risk your comfort with fatiguing walks, and your lives over mountain passes.” But there are many who venture all this distinctly for the gain of the pleasure of reaction. The strained muscle tortured with a steep descent is soon humoured with a long stretch of level ground; the burning, unprotected path is occasionally relieved with a mile or so of cool and refreshing wood; the parched throat enjoys to the utmost the handful of water scooped up from the bubbling spring; at the top of every pass there is a rest; and, believe me, the evening supper is enjoyed the most by those who have earned it on foot. Again, does it never occur to us that there are many who would go up mountains for the distinct pleasure of peace, for the delight of being left alone, and for the enjoyment of solitude and rest? The tired brain, the shattered nerves, the overworked frame, and the temperament positively jarred by an excess of activity—is it not possible to find for such as these a peaceful abiding place? They may envy the activity of the pedestrian, but they want to be left alone and to do nothing. They like to take their books under shady trees, and to potter about on sunny terraces. It is no pleasure to them to be dragged out of bed, and wrapped round in a blanket, to see the dawn. They do not care to be hauled up any steep path for the sake of the primrose glow of the setting sun. If they can catch these “effects” in their daily quiet path, well and good; but it is a burden to them to be compelled to admire nature with other people’s eyes. It is positively distressing when they find the base of some popular mountain as tempestuous as Clapham Junction, and all its hotels like refreshment buffets. Their pleasure is destroyed when they are knocked about with portmanteaus and packages, prodded with new alpenstocks, worried by fruitsellers, and pestered to buy Swiss paper-knives. Where, then, shall such as these find peace? to what corner of this delightful country can they turn in order to avoid the stream of excursionists? and whither can they make their way in order to hide under green trees, to get peeps at the blue lake unobserved, to do as they like without being worried, to avoid the necessity of dressing a dozen times a day, and, in a word, to spend their holiday in a quiet palace, surrounded by an English park? I think I know. The traveller by steamer along the Lake of Lucerne to Fluelen, or up the arm of the water towards Alpnacht, must have noticed the fine façade of a handsome house on the ridge of a mountain, embedded in dark forest trees. Some take it for the seat of a prince, and others for the holiday home of some envied millionaire. But this beautiful mountain home is really the establishment of Bürgenstock, where those who are baked in Lucerne ascend to the cool, and those who detest excitement repair for peace. You can approach Bürgenstock from two sides. Disembarking at Stannstadt on the Alpnacht steamer route, the visitor finds himself at the foot of the winding and shaded carriage route leading to the establishment; but those of a more enterprising disposition can cross the lake from the Righi to Buochs, and can mount to the Bürgenstock up a picturesque but somewhat exhausting footpath. In point of fact, to get to the Bürgenstock from Lucerne, or any of the other handy places on the lake, is the very easiest thing in the world. The question is, what shall we find when we get there? There is but one answer. Peace—no noise, no confusion, no worry, no din. The wielder of the white alpenstock is far away; the wearer of _edelweiss_ is up some other mountain. The one word which would occur to a German in briefly describing its tone would be _gemüthlich_. The house is handsome enough, to be sure, with its fine portico—the very ditto of that at Stafford House in St. James’s Park—its fine lofty rooms, its cool decorated hall, its imposing staircase, and its bedrooms overlooking the Lake of Lucerne in the front, and at the back an undulating valley, full of wildflowers and fringed with fir trees. But the grounds of the Bürgenstock constitute its chief charm, and give to it that calm and rural appearance which so soothes the peaceful traveller and delights those who have come up for rest and wish to be left alone. Leave the façade of the house on one side, and, passing under a wooden rustic bridge, mazy paths and gentle slopes will lead you under tall trees to seats and bowers and shaded nooks, where the ladies work, the industrious write or read, and the idlers sit looking upon the lake and on the distant hills with a determination worthy of distinct praise. Leave the house on the other side, and still under a shaded avenue you can ascend to a tangled wood full of wild raspberries and mountain strawberries, or descend to the smiling valley, the peaceful chapel on the hillside, or to the pleasant contemplation of Swiss village life. Remember, however, that under all circumstances you are left alone, and made to feel at home. No guides or porters surround the house suggesting excursions for the morrow, or disturbing the simplicity of the scene. It is considered an eccentricity to leave the grounds, and a sign of incipient madness to leave the shaded avenues for the burning sun. The day is spent in pleasant and delightful idleness, and the art of doing nothing comfortably is here cultivated to its finest extreme. Life at the Bürgenstock is equally divided between a dawdle and a doze. We do not know how the time passes, but it slips away. Perhaps in the morning there is a desultory chat, with some of us seated in a quiet shaded corner, and the others sprawling indolently amongst the wildflowers growing here in such rare luxuriance; and before we know that an hour has passed the bell tells us it is dinner time. An afternoon siesta, when the sun is almost intolerable even at the Bürgenstock, is succeeded by a stroll towards the rustic farm, where the invalids drink evening milk and whey, instead of afternoon tea; and after supper-time comes the rest upon the hotel terrace. At other places the band plays at least twice a day; and it has been found that Continental music is invariably accompanied by Parisian toilettes, fresh ribbons and apparently endless skirts. But whether the visitors at Bürgenstock do not care to dive too deeply into their enormous travelling trunks, or that it is found that music too surely drowns the assertive conversation of our Teutonic brothers and sisters—the sole drawback to perfect peace—I cannot say; but certain it is that Friday evenings and Saturday mornings are alone set apart for an occasional gavotte, a chance waltz, or the mild splutter of an inoffensive squib. Bürgenstock cannot be fast, even when it tries. When, after some difficulty, they get up a dance in one of the _salons_, the several forms of etiquette recognised by various nations are so puzzling that the entertainment is apt to fall flat. For instance, an English young lady is so astounded by the determined attitude of some German officer, who answers her gentle excuse with a fiery and blustering, “Mademoiselle, I take no refusal!” that she departs frightened into the comforting darkness of the Bürgenstock garden. Still, her fate is not so marked as that of her sister, approached gallantly by a proud Russian, who refuses to take a turn at the humble polka without a formal introduction to mamma, a loud declaration of title, and a brief epitome of his worldly possessions. Nor is this all. A second German, indignant at the idea that his wishes should be crossed, demands authoritatively, and in accordance with his views of etiquette, an extra dance for each occasion on which he is refused; and a third, triumphant with the possession of a slim English waist, rushes headlong and boisterously into the circle with the questionable declaration, “Now I will show you how we Germans dance!” So, under these circumstances, it cannot be surprising that the Bürgenstock balls finish as weakly as the poor little squibs and rockets which are occasionally sent up from the terrace to show Lucerne that there is a faint flicker of life on the opposite mountain. Honeymoons are permitted a licence of isolation all the world over and in every quarter of the world, romantic or unromantic; but the Bürgenstock is distinguished by its endless consecration of golden and silver weddings. Old gentlemen, not always the most fascinating in appearance, extend to the faithful partners of their life a marked devotion very charming to behold. The oldest couples become lovers at the Bürgenstock, and the youngest carefully avail themselves of the privileges of youth. I have but faintly sketched the charms and the beauty of the scene, which changes from sunrise to sunset. But there is one moment of the day by which the Bürgenstock will be best remembered by all who value the simple charms and grateful quiet of the holiday home among the trees. It is not in the very early morning, when the dew is brushed away from the long meadow grass, and the explorer mounts to the topmost ridge of the Hammetschwand to see the haze of hot mist lift from the lake and the blue distance open to his view; it is not under the pine trees in the morning, amongst the Alpine flowers and mountain fruit; it is not in the burning afternoon, when it is a relief to turn to the range of snow mountains across the wooded valley; it is not at sunset, at the pavilion by the farm, when Pilatus stands in a relief of pale gold, and the sun sinks crimson behind the deep green fir forests; but it is at night. The silence is alone broken by the chirrup of a million grasshoppers in the meadows, by the wandering tinkle of the cattle bell, by the distant striking of the church clock down in the valley. The music is over, the loud talkers are asleep, no shriek of railway whistle offends the ear. It is a silence that can be felt, and then it is that our thoughts go back to home and imprisoned London, and it seems selfish to enjoy the beauty of Bürgenstock. XIV. AMERICA BY THE AVON. Luckily for me, the new play fixed for Saturday night is put off, and instead of taking my seat at eight o’clock in the playhouse, I find myself comfortably settled under the hospitable roof of the Red Horse, at Stratford-on-Avon. It is a bright, frosty, starlit night, and on the road from the station we have had a glimpse of the spire of the old collegiate church nestling among the trees still clothed with autumnal beauty; we have passed by the schoolhouse where Shakespeare was educated, and the old Guild Chapel, and the Shakespeare Hotel, with its cosy bar-parlour, where poets of the Shenstone type must have often found their “warmest welcome at an inn;” by New Place, razed to the ground at the beginning of the century by an iconoclastic parson, who happily knew not what mischief he was doing, and so round by the fine broad street to Washington Irving’s inn, beloved by Americans. It is a specially appropriate resting-place to-day, since we have all come to dedicate, or inaugurate, or to consecrate to the use and benefit of Shakespeare’s town for all time a combined drinking fountain and clock tower, erected in the Rothermarket by Mr. G. W. Childs, of Philadelphia, who seems to be beloved by all Englishmen who have the honour of his acquaintance, and who, like most newspaper proprietors of my acquaintance, appears to be a thoroughly good fellow. A bright cheery fire is burning in Washington Irving’s parlour, the old Sexton’s clock is ticking contentedly in a corner, in a glass cupboard the chair of the charming writer is religiously preserved, and the good-natured, bright-eyed maid of the inn soon produces the Washington Irving poker, polished like silver, and carefully preserved in an embroidered case. Our excellent host and hostess have a happy knack of remembering their guests, and making them at home at once. I was at once told the day and the occasion of my last visit to Stratford, when the new Memorial Theatre was opened by Lady Martin. Each bedroom, with its old furniture, has a bright fire burning on the hearth; we are all regarded as friends of the family; and after an old-fashioned dinner, excellently served, we find ourselves in the streets of Stratford-on-Avon, out on the prowl before the shops are closed on Saturday night. What a clean, well-kept town it is! The streets seem swept and garnished, the dear old half-timbered houses look as polished as if they had come out of a child’s Dutch toy-box. How happy and contented and easy-going the townfolk and villagers look, after the scowling, angry, murderous faces of modern Trafalgar Square! They say that the times—the agricultural times—are bad also in Warwickshire; but there is peace, thank God! in the old, dreamy, sleepy town, and they don’t make day or night hideous with blasphemous speech or fustian rhetoric. They do not bray about the place with black or red flags, and curse their neighbours; but the old town, made beautiful by Shakespeare’s memory, is as silent as the grave where the beloved poet rests. The pilgrim is for a moment uncertain whither to turn his footsteps. There is the Shakespeare House, in Henley Street, still affectionately guarded by the two kind ladies who have recently been insulted by a vulgar disciple of the “new journalism.” There is the Town Hall, with its priceless Gainsborough portrait of David Garrick and all the Corporation treasures. There is New Stratford, by the Avon, where the Flowers have, at an enormous cost and with noble unselfishness, erected the Memorial Theatre, and appended to it both Library and Picture Gallery, and where in the dim future it is hoped that some high-spirited enthusiast will endow a School of Art or little University for the actors of the future. But to-night our business is with the Fountain and Clock Tower in the old market, where the rural fairs are held, the princely gift of an American citizen, that is to be dedicated to the town on Monday morning by Mr. Henry Irving, whose personal popularity at Stratford exceeds that of any other actor who has visited the Shakespearian shrine. And how about the Fountain? some will ask. Is it pretty? Is it appropriate? Is it a work of art? Well, there is no discussing such matters. At Stratford we do not “look a gift horse in the mouth.” At any rate, it has cost a great deal of money. Mr. Childs, the liberal donor, gave the promoters of the scheme _carte blanche_; and if the memorial does not rival the work of Sir Gilbert Scott in design, or the carving on old English cathedrals in execution, we can only sigh, and say that art work is not what it was, and that art workmen are not so enthusiastic as in the days gone by. As some one observed to me, “Well, if it is not very beautiful to look at, it has a very good clock,” and in this practical age that is enough. We must go to Lichfield to see stone-carving—work that stands out, after this lapse of time, like ivory or Parian marble. At Stratford, amongst these rare old houses, we must be content with the best work of the architectural engineer and a very good clock. The carving looks to me as if it had been turned out by machinery, not by hand. The design is “squatty,” and the detail poor. In these days of lovely marbles and mosaics, there might surely have been more polish and colour. But let that be. The clock face is bright blue, and the time-piece is the next most important thing to the drinking-trough. The boys and girls gaze up at the American memorial, and I have little doubt that they admire the blurred stonework better than those rare old gable fronts in the old town or the specimens of Elizabethan architecture in which dear old Stratford is so rich. One turn in the peaceful churchyard before we retire to rest. A soft wind is whispering through the avenue, and blowing the dead leaves upon forgotten graves. The river flows silently beside the last home of the peaceful dead. We can wander among the tombstones, for there is a public pathway under the avenue, and it is as light as day; and as three of us—old friends—stand speechless this soft October evening within touch of Shakespeare’s tomb, all so silent, all so restful, all so full of past memories and the dim, dark future for all of us, we say to one another that none of us in the long-after years will ever forget that strange experience; and when the first of us has gone, the others left will remember how we three stood alone there in the silence by the great carved porch of Stratford-on-Avon church that leads the pilgrim up to Shakespeare’s tomb. A lovely, sunny Sunday morning succeeds a peaceful night. All cares of London have been blown away, and we arise in amity with all men. It is a quiet day of rest and friendly hospitality. Cheery “Joe” Parkinson takes us off, when the vicar’s determined sermon is over, to see if changes and unsympathetic iconoclasm have swept away the dedication to the famous Freemasons’ window that was put up when the Stratford-on-Avon Lodge was bodily borne off from the Avon to the Thames by the enthusiastic brother. Every one knows Joe Parkinson at Stratford. He has evidently a masonic wink in his eye, and all people are “Hail fellow, well met,” with him, from the church verger to the proprietor of the local paper. When we miss him he is found with a kind of improvised sub-committee of Masons, in an old tavern parlour; and there is a mystery about my old friend that I have never been able to fathom since we both, as civil service clerks, went “special correspondenting” together, and woke the echoes of old Dublin on the occasion of a princely visit. Frank Marshall—dear old fellow, since gone to his rest—is of an undecided turn of mind. He travels with enough luggage for an emperor, and can never find anything after all, or decide upon the best kind of medicine for his immediate malady. He is always in a good temper, but never in time for anything. However, by the aid of Parkinson’s impressive dignity, and by my mild persuasion, we get the genial Frank as far as Ann Hathaway’s cottage; and on the road he positively shocks us with his Shakespearian heresies. He will not allow with me that the poet was a Catholic, nor will he permit with Parkinson that “the bard” was a Freemason; but he insists, notwithstanding the quotation on Mr. Childs’ Fountain, that Shakespeare never wrote the play of _Henry the Eighth_; and it is only by the threat of brute force, two to one, that in the peaceful Warwickshire lanes he is compelled to abandon disputed points and to babble mildly of Shakespearian anthology. Before sunset Irving has arrived with faithful Bram Stoker, and, having been cheered by the students and loungers of Stratford, is on his road to hospitable Avonbank, where he is to be the guest of Mr. Charles Flower. It is an evening of hospitality. For my own part, I would not exchange my invitation for any of these, for I find myself in a refined and beautiful English home, and enjoy an evening long to be remembered. My host is a sportsman and an artist, a man of the world and of intellect. My hostess is one of the most artistic amateur singers that I have heard in a long experience. She sings “Ruth” and “O rest in the Lord” with a purity of expression and a delicacy of taste that are superior to training and masters—they are innate. Every one sings in this happy family, from the merry lad who is a ’Varsity oar down to the curly-headed youngest, with his sweet boyish soprano; and so, among pictures and books, the best music, and refinement of domestic peace, another happy day at Stratford comes to a close. By midday on Monday the sights of Stratford—closed to us yesterday—have been thoroughly explored. The theatre, the renowned gardens, the library, the pictures, the Shakespeare Museum,—in and out of all of these we go in the old fashion, until the time comes when we have to assemble at the Fountain and await the coming of the Mayor, his scarlet beadle with a wooden wand, and his attendants with brass maces universally termed “pokers.” In a tent the fair ladies of Stratford-on-Avon have assembled. Unfortunately Lady Martin is not here, nor Miss Mary Anderson, both idolised at Stratford by old and young playgoers. The ladies, of course, look very charming; but we regret that they are hidden away in a tent where they cannot see, and are sorry that they did not bring some shrubs or flowers to decorate the cold stone front of that colourless fountain. I never remember to have seen any memorial of the kind with less flowers. Fancy, no flowers to deck a present to Shakespeare’s land! They should have been brought here in profusion from the conservatory, and from the country lanes and cottage gardens. However, we had two dear old collie dogs. No one brought them, no one seemed to know from whence they came; but these two dogs had instinct enough to take up a good place to hear all that was said, and they evidently considered that the Fountain was erected as much for their benefit as for that of their two-footed neighbours. The novelty to us old-fashioned correspondents was the appearance on the scene of one of the new school of lady correspondents. Close by a battered provincial reporter, who wore a hat that must have been invented fifty years ago, stood a neat little lady, very pretty, very expressive in eye and features, charmingly dressed in olive-green plush, who with her dainty little gold-edged notebook and her pretty little silver pencil was passed to the front by acclamation. No one stood in the way—bless you! There she was, right in the front, smiling sweetly at Mr. Irving, and receiving the compliments of all present. Mayor and aldermen ran far and wide to get information for her. She had a dozen provincial slaves at her command; at the banquet the pretty special correspondent was petted and fêted and toasted; she looked enchanting as she scribbled her little notes; she was the life and soul of the luncheon party; her turtle was served by an alderman, and her champagne poured out by a common councillor. On the whole, our American cousins never did a sharper thing than when they invented special lady correspondents. They are never snubbed, bless you—they come to the front! The ceremony was, as all such ceremonies are, impressive and interesting. A veteran correspondent at my side amused me immensely with his stupendous assurance and impressive manner. At one time they were pushing the veteran into the middle of the back of the town crier. He turned round with a lordly air to protect the place—naturally the best—that he had selected for himself. “Excuse me, sir,” he said to his assailant, with a disdainful air: “by no possibility can there be room for more than one man in the front. I prefer to be that man!” When the Mayor had spoken, and Mr. Lowell’s letter had been read, there was a loud shout for Mr. Irving. The ladies insisted that the actor should be mounted in some conspicuous position. “Quite right,” said the Mayor; “now one of you dear ladies lend Mr. Irving a chair to stand on, and then you can sit upon it afterwards!” The offer was so tempting that a forest of chairs was uplifted; but Mr. Irving had meanwhile gracefully leaped into the empty basin of the Fountain, and the two collie dogs looked upon the proceeding with grave suspicion. They thought the actor was their friend, but now they doubted his personal honour. It was their trough, not his. It was a fountain, not a platform. However, the actor looked wonderfully well, and never did his voice sound better than when reciting the verses of Dr. Wendell Holmes, or pronouncing his eulogium on Shakespeare and the American race. The dogs watched their opportunity, and when Mr. Irving jumped down the cleverest dog jumped up. Directly the clean, fresh water was turned on, the dog lapped it up with evident pleasure. That was the true and practical inauguration of the gift of Mr. Childs. XV. THE VALLEY OF THE SEINE. Although the statement may have very little attraction for all who suffer the dire agonies of sea-sickness, and whose travelling pleasure is quite destroyed by a long sea-passage, it is quite certain that those who enter France and proceed to Paris by any other than the Newhaven and Dieppe route are deprived of one of the most picturesque journeys within easy reach of the Londoner. The well-known charm of the Thames valley on the way to the west of England, the combined attractions of the river pictures by Maidenhead, Pangbourne and Goring, that equally remarkable succession of bold and striking views on the Ostend line in the neighbourhood of Spa and Chaudfontaine, must surely yield their claims to the prize for beauty to the zigzag course through the valley of the Seine during lovely weather, and at the fertile season of the year. It is not unnatural that the Englishman should feel at home in Normandy, or should somehow connect the hills and dales, and clean cities and pretty villages, with the England he has left behind him. That barren and desolate tract of country between Calais and Paris is a change indeed from the English landscape on which the eye has recently rested, and nothing whatever is lost by taking the night journey to Paris, and inducing sleep, until the heavy train clanks and rattles over the points on entering the Chemin de Fer du Nord. But with the western journey to Paris it is imperative that the travelling should be done by daylight, in order not to miss the green and wooded panorama, the cities, the châteaux, the parks, the flower gardens, and the meadows, which do not occur at long intervals, but in one almost unbroken and beautiful line. It must have been with a recollection of Normandy fresh in her memory that Mary Queen of Scots uttered her pathetic lament over her beloved country, when she was compelled to change the scene of her life from these smiling orchards and fair gardens for the rough but invigorating atmosphere of Great Britain. In our hurry to reach Paris and get on our way—to Switzerland, to Germany, or where not—for our holiday tour, we are too apt to pass by without a visit, cities that are rich in historical associations, towns that are distinguished for the grandeur of the panoramic display outside their walls, and villages that give an admirable notion of the gaiety and careless abandonment of French outdoor life. Types of all these examples may be found in the journey along the valley of the Seine, and it would be well if holiday travellers were more fully aware of the advantage of breaking a long railway journey at stated points. For the athletic Englishman and his companions there is but one way thoroughly to enjoy the panorama of this lovely valley. He should bring over his boat on a steamer to Havre, and row up the river to Paris, contrasting without prejudice the Seine scenery, which may be new to him, with the Thames pictures, with which he will no doubt be intimately familiar. To discover a Rouen between London Bridge and the Isis—a city so rich in ecclesiastical and historical monuments, a city at once so old and yet so new, a city so busy and yet so sedate, a city of boulevards and ancient wooden houses, of quays and shipping and merchandise, and yet of narrow streets and gables and mediæval beauty—would be a matter of some difficulty. Oxford may be suggested, but the natural position of our University town cannot be compared with that of Rouen. But then, it may be said, where will you find a Richmond on the Seine? I instantly answer—why, at St. Germain-en-Laye—the scene of the birth of Henri IV. of France, where the old hunting-box has been turned into one of the most popular restaurants and hotels outside Paris. We Londoners pride ourselves—not undeservedly—on the panorama to be seen from the top of Richmond Hill. We take our foreign friends out there on Sunday to dinner. We bid them smoke their cigars on the terrace under the trees, with the silver Thames and its pretty islands down below at their feet, and an English view before them which, in its way, cannot be surpassed. We expect no answer, and are inclined to reject any comparison. But suppose our Parisian friend asks—whilst admitting the finish and completeness of the English picture—whether we have ever driven out from Paris and dined at the Hôtel du Pavilion Henri IV. at St. Germain-en-Laye; whether we have been introduced to this German-looking town with the linden alleys, the old park, and the matchless view overlooking the river Seine; and sipped our coffee on the St. Germain terraces, with the great hill of Mont Valérien hovering over the landscape, with the serpentine river, dotted with islands, gliding in and out among the trees and villages, and with a suggestion of distance which is so absorbing that it is never thoroughly realised until one thinks over the view next day?—it is not impossible to find a rival to your English Richmond. Or, say again, that we are praising the freedom and carelessness of our Twickenham and Teddington boating life, showing our villas and our English lawns, pointing out where the young Londoners come down in the summer to sleep at riverside inns, and bathe and fish, and be free from the dust of London. Well, within an easy distance of Paris there is a certain summer holiday-ground called Bougival, where the gudgeons and eels are not bad eating; where the village inns are full all the season with bathers, fishers and exhausted Parisians; and where, take it altogether, there will be found no mean rival to Teddington or Twickenham these summer evenings. These are the three places in the Seine valley which may be recommended, among many others, as interesting to the English traveller—to one a little weary of the sea, but appreciative of river scenes and beautiful landscape: Rouen, with its Gothic towers and countless spires and shipping, set in a hollow and surrounded by hills; St. Germain, built on the side of a lovely slope overlooking a superb prospect; and Bougival, the little, reckless, noisy, river village, where the Parisians of a Bohemian tendency love to dine, and where they are celebrated for their “Bals de Canotiers” every Sunday evening. First, then, there is Rouen, where, in the noble Cathedral, lies buried the lion heart of Richard of England, and where will be found monuments of the English kings and dukes of Normandy and France, whose memories make the old town so full of interest to us. But I do not profess to give a detailed account, historical and architectural, of the monuments in the Cathedral of Rouen, and in the equally celebrated Abbey Church of St. Ouen, to which the stranger will instantly repair. They are to be found described in an excellent little French book, which can be bought in the town for a franc and a half, though perhaps it will be as well to secure the additional assistance of the Suisse in full uniform, who keeps the chancel gates carefully locked, and looks for his perquisite from every stranger. Apart from the interesting view of Rouen from the railway station, where it looks like a highly decorated edition of Bath, and quite apart from any outlook which may be obtained after ascending the hill of St. Catherine, when at one’s feet will be found the tall chimneys, the shipping, and the warehouses of a thriving commercial town united to the spires, towers and gables of an ancient city, the advantages of Rouen to the hurrying traveller are manifest. Collected in a compact little circle, all within an easy walk of one another, are the architectural monuments and the gay attractions of a lively town. Turn up one street, and you are lost in admiration at the decorated western façade of the Cathedral, still exquisitely beautiful, notwithstanding the hacking it has received from religious fanatics; turn down another, and you are on the smiling quay, among the cafés and waiters, and the soldiers of the cavalry regiment quartered in the town. At one minute you are listening to the tragical story of the execution of Berzeval, who was the architect of the Church of St. Ouen, and who died by the hand of the law for murdering his apprentice, because he was jealous of his artistic success; at another you have crossed over to the fruit market, and are bargaining for peaches and greengages with a Normandy peasant. Whilst an artistic section of the family is making rapid notebook sketches of the wooden gabled houses of old Rouen up and down the narrow streets, and courts and gloomy alleys, or hunting among old furniture shops for specimens of _faïence de Rouen_, others not so energetic will be found studying the latest Parisian fashions in the bright new street leading up to the railway station. There is a lightness and buoyancy in the Rouen atmosphere not unlike that of Paris, and the outdoor life is just as merry. When the curfew bell has rung from the old tower, and it is dark and dismal in old-fashioned Rouen, the gaiety of the evening is just commencing on the boulevard by the quay. All the peasants in their costumes have come out here, now that work is over, to sit under the trees and enjoy the cool of the evening; a band is playing in the little square, and the cafés are all lighted and looking their best. At the theatre Madame Peschard is singing that delightful melody which made the success of Offenbach’s “Chanson de Fortunio,” and it is strange indeed if we have arrived at the Normandy capital on an evening when there are no open-air concerts. Many manufacturing and shipping towns are either grimy with smoke or dirty with refuse from lading and unlading. It is not so at Rouen. The smoke from the chimneys is carried away and lost among the hills, and in the busiest part of the quay a _blanchisseuse_ has gone down the steps to rinse her linen in the clear water. An evening at Rouen, and an early morning walk about the streets and markets, have nothing in them but the most agreeable associations. Quite a different source of interest will be found in the picturesque town of St. Germain-en-Laye, whither the rich Parisians proceed to eat good dinners in the celebrated restaurant built in the garden overlooking the Seine valley, and where will be found a view which may well be compared to that of Richmond: indeed, the hotels of the English town can boast no terraces or gardens that can be compared to those of St. Germain. These must have been comfortable quarters for the German army of occupation in the recent war: a hostelry celebrated for its cookery and its cellar of rare wines; a town hedged round with a park and green _allées_, which must have reminded the Prussian officers of the Ananasberg at pretty Düsseldorf; a picture from the hotel garden not unlike many examples of Rhine scenery; and far away in the long distance the besieged and starving capital and the heights of Mont Valérien. There are no traces at St. Germain of the foreign army of occupation, and not a suggestion in its beautiful park and lovely terraces of the conquering enemy. From Paris on high days and holidays come the drags and four-in-hands with visitors to dine in the cabinets of Henri IV.’s Pavilion, to admire the view, to breathe fresh air, to drink champagne, to suggest curious dishes to the _chef_, and call for green almonds at dessert. Here in the round pond in the hotel garden is the fine old vulture which once belonged to Alexandre Dumas. He has sat on his perch in this very spot since 1848, when he was left by his master in a hurry, and has never since been called for. For companion he has an eagle in a wooden cage, and several song-birds among the bushes; but the grim old vulture is evidently of a meditative turn of mind, and, with his eyes fixed upon Paris, appears to be deeply absorbed in the contemplation of French history. It is a fascinating spot, this terraced garden of the celebrated St. Germain hotel, with its quiet corners and its quaintly-cut yew trees—some designed as cradles, to remind us that it is the birthplace of the King of France. It is a gay place, this military town of St. Germain, with its bands and promenades and officers in uniform—particularly just now, when under the trees of the park are arranged the shows and booths and roundabouts, which are requisite for the annual _fête_ and fair. All Paris will be coming in this direction on Sunday to dine and dance and hear the music; and if the sun shines as it is shining now enthusiastic admiration will be expressed at one of the widest and most extended pictures of the valley of the Seine. For this is the correct time of all the year for outdoor festivals. Not a drop of rain has fallen for a fortnight, except, perhaps, at night, when we are in bed and fast asleep; and as you travel along the Seine valley, over and over again will be seen the Venetian masts, the banners, booths, and gay decorations set among the trees and the flowers so luxuriant in colour. A French Sunday _fête_ always, more or less, wears a theatrical and brilliant dress; but pretty little Bougival, by the side of the river, is the place where one is most surely reminded of the stage. The processions, the groupings, the constant colour, the animated life and the merry music, recall now ballet, now opera, and always some pleasant bit of stage effect. Bougival is a charming spot, where the river is intersected by leafy islands, and all day long on a Sunday is merry with the laughter of rowing parties. They dine on an open balcony facing the river, and they dance in a garden at the back. Here careless, amusement-loving Paris is seen in its most picturesque attire; and no one dreams of going home until the moon is up and the lights have long been extinguished in the Champs-Elysées. Believe me, there are many most welcome pictures of French life in the long Seine valley; and unless it happens that time is a great object—unless it be essential to peep at popular Boulogne, to eat wall-fruit at Abbeville, to lunch at Amiens, or to look out at Creil—there are many worse holiday amusements than those to be found about Rouen, St. Germain, and the river villages to which the Parisians rush when the working week is over. XVI. A HARVEST SUN. It is half-past five o’clock on a lovely summer morning in mid-August. A crowd of labourers, headed by the foreman, is assembled under the farmer’s window. Before the pluckiest or the least sleepy of the band of early risers summons up courage to tap at the window-pane with the end of his scythe or to throw up a handful of pebbles or sand to awaken “the master,” let me present to you in its full glory this lovely scene of incomparable English landscape. The farm labourer, if he only knew it, sees nature in her richest and purest attire. What money we spend, what dreary, dusty railway journeys we undergo, what a fuss and a fume we must get in, what conquering of languages and study of Bradshaw’s Railway Guide, before we can see the sun rise on the Righi mountain, or the sun sink over the Jungfrau at Interlaken! We clothe ourselves with borrowed blankets at the Righi-Kulm. An electric bell rings, and there is a hustling of humanity, a clattering of cosmopolitan boots. It is like leaving a bathing-machine for a plunge in the sea. We hesitate as to the expediency of leaving purses and valuables in the deserted hotel bedroom. And all for what? To see the sun rise sulkily or beautifully over the series of snow peaks, or to get back to bed disappointed, laden with spoils from the bric-à-brac stalls that have been driving a roaring trade with the semi-somnolent Britisher. I can give you as good a sunrise for a few shillings. I can promise you more beauty and less inconvenience at our Norfolk village, that can be reached in four or five hours from the Liverpool Street or St. Pancras station. The sun rises here as at the Righi; here over the sea, there over the mountains. Here over countless acres of wheat and barley, there over snow peaks and glorious panorama of distance. All idea of foul weather has disappeared. The rainclouds have sailed away. The sea has become calm as a millpond. The wind has tried every quarter, but at last it has settled down to a dead calm. The sails of the old mill overlooking the silent farm refuse to stir. There is sunlight on sea and on cliff, sunlight dancing down the deserted lanes, sunlight travelling fast over the fern-covered hills, sunlight beating against the windows of the sleep-haunted farm. If that old foreman of the farm could only appreciate nature that is ever with him as we can love it who have it not, what wonderful stories he would have to tell of the summer mornings he has trudged from his cottage in the village to wake the master at the farm! Already the birds are in full song in the hedges, and the bees are busy in the strawberry-tinted blossoms of the blackberries. The farmer’s cocks and hens have taken a fancy to roosting in the young oak and blackthorn opposite the farm gate, and are now wending their way in procession to the farmyard to see what is going on, and to pay a morning call to the geese, the turkeys and the ducks, who are paddling in the slush or mirroring their white and parti-coloured breasts in the farmyard pond on which the morning sun is shining. Already a farm labourer who has got his orders overnight is tethering the oxen and horses in a grass field; the farm boys and the labourers’ children, turned out at cockcrow, are off to the cliff’s edge to look out to sea, or to slide down the sand slopes for the want of something better to do. All the village is awake save the visitors at the farm, who are sleeping peacefully behind those white blinds on which the morning sun flings its reproachful rays. Why should they not sleep? The hard-worked clergyman is here, worn out with his London ministering, enjoying his summer holiday, though the perambulating postman tells me he delivers to him “over a score letters” every morning; the young wife is here—she cannot be more than three-and-twenty; and I saw her this morning wending her way to the sea with two little children who could scarcely toddle, a baby in arms, and a patient husband, who carried an early luncheon in a lawyer’s brief bag; tired, rest-hunting brain workers are here scattered about the two or three seaside farms that compose our village. Why should they not sleep, poor things, seeing that it is as yet but half-past five o’clock in the morning? The labourer’s day is different from ours. He has seen the country all his life, and is apparently sick of it. He would rather have one hour in London than one summer day in the Norfolk village. He cannot understand or even dimly appreciate this delightful rest. They missed me for a few days from my accustomed haunts, and when I was back again they one and all “hoped I had enjoyed myself when I was up in London.” It was to them an ambition—to me a necessity. But the labourers, for all they may tell you to the contrary, thrive well on the fresh air and the sea breezes. Their children have no ache or ailment. The youngest mother is up and about within a few days of her latest trouble. Their wages scarcely ever run to a pound a week; but the food they eat is wholesome, the air they breathe is sweet; they have kind friends at the parsonage or the big house to look after them when they are in trouble; they can raise flowers and grow vegetables; their cottages are bright in front with marigold and lavender, and well stocked behind with French beans and potatoes and vegetable-marrow. Each tiny homestead is furnished with its cottage garden, and when I see these healthy labourers, their buxom wives and strong-limbed children, I cannot find it in my utmost sympathy to pity these tillers of the soil, notwithstanding the fact of their twelve odd shillings a week wage and abated harvest-money. I have seen in my time other working men leaving their homes at half-past five o’clock in the morning; but that was in London, and not in a seaside village. I have seen issuing from courts and alleys, from filthy squares and frowzy tenements, the men who go forth to their work and their labour at the only hour when London can ever be pure and beautiful. The sunrise, in its transcendent beauty, appears to purify the wretchedness of yesterday. All the sins and oaths and uncleanness of the last night’s revel are instantly blotted out. The City church, that was a dull, deformed and insignificant building, becomes architecturally beautiful in a pure, clear atmosphere. The warehouse is turned into a palace in the morning light. For the London labourer there is the song of the lark; but it is caged and hung on a nail outside some upper-floor window in a dingy street. He has flowers, but they are on the outskirts of Covent Garden Market. His country is brought up to him by the teams and waggons of the market gardener. His children, if they desire grass and greenery, must pluck it by handsful through the closed railings of the London squares, or dig it up between the stones of unfrequented courts. When the farmer is at length aroused, and opens his bedroom window to give the orders for the day, he finds the labourers in a tolerably contented condition. To begin with, the weather has at last set fair. There is not a cloud in the sky, and no storm-warning out at sea. The men are not likely to lose a day’s wage by huddling in barns or under hedges whilst the golden grain is soaking on the ground. Everything looks well for a glorious harvest day. Turkeys and geese are enjoying an animated conversation from either side of the farmyard; cows and horses alike join in a chorus of congratulations for the fine weather. The first bright beams of the sun are glinting on sea and field, throwing into relief the great new rick of this year’s wheat already thatched in the yard, and warming the strewn barley on the field slopes that has been soaked by last night’s heavy dew. The faintest of faint breezes blows across the land from the cliff, just shaking the wisps of straw caught by the hedgerows from last night’s waggon load, playing with the leaves of the silver limes, and cooling the atmosphere preparatory to a day of tremendous heat. The foreman and the farmer agree that it is a good ripening day. The wheat is already carried and stacked. The oats have been safely got in. But the barley will be all the better for a good day’s drying in the sun. So it is decided to leave off “carrying” until the evening, and to proceed with the “cutting” at the most distant corner of the farm, some mile and a half distant inland. Away go the labourers, with the old foreman at their head—a faithful fellow, who has tilled and cultivated the soil “man and boy” for sixty years, and is living now in the same cottage where he was born. He is very learned on the moot question whether it is better to work the land on the “six-year shift,” or by a more constant rotation of crops; and he and all the others are decidedly of opinion that the land would produce something better than bright poppies and flowery weeds if it were only encouraged a little more, better ploughed, and treated to a richer manure than from the mere feeding of cattle and sheep. “Why, in my father’s time, this very land yielded double as many coombs an acre as it does now.” This is the universal complaint. The question of the “harvest wage” is once more discussed as the farm labourers troop along through the village to their work, calling at their various cottages to tell the missus where the children are to be sent with the dinner at midday. The farmers and the men have had an amicable discussion over the harvest wage. True, the men got seven pounds last year; but times are bad, and this year it will not run to more than six pounds five—enough for weekly expenses at home and to save the year’s rent from in addition, provided the harvest is a short one. But if, as happens in some cases, it is prolonged over four or five weeks, it will be a pinch to keep the family and pay the rent out of the harvest-money. However, in our village the men are sensible fellows. To take six pounds five, to believe the masters, and to live on friendly terms with them throughout the year, is better than to sit at home sulkily on strike, to bear the reproaches of the wife and the sad faces of the children, and to live from hand to mouth on the pittance doled out by the union. So the farmer closes his window, and the men in the merry sunlight trudge forward to their work. The field they are to reap to-day lies in a charmingly picturesque district. We pass from the village over a couple of stiles, and through a sloping barley field yet uncut. At the top of the hill is the new village church—there has only been one wedding in it as yet—that has been built out of the _débris_ of the old church, pulled down for fear of destruction from the falling cliff. The church, from which the gloss of newness has not yet worn off, lies in a little nest of romantic farms. What a picture this one would make, with its face of deep green ivy covering and hiding every brick and stone, and its little white Gothic windows of lattice work; and this old Eagle farm is comfortable enough, and splendidly built in the old strong fashion, deriving its name from a sculptured eagle in an embrasure of one of the farm barns. All these hospitable farmers have opened their houses to visitors this summer-time. Quiet, dreamy folks they must be, for I seldom see them in my walks, I never find them in the morning bathing on the beach, or at night, when the moon shines over the forgotten dead in the old churchyard. I presume that, although they sleep at night in the old farmhouses, they spend their days for the most part on Cromer sands or on Mundesley beach, driving in at early morning and back at late night. If so, they little understand the charm of farmhouse existence by the sea. They would be happier, if they only knew it, on the cliff and in the cornfields, reading up some forgotten chapter from the exhaustless book of nature. The romance of the reaping field departed altogether with the abandonment of the sickle and the scythe. It is only on sloping hills or on uneven ground that the crops are attacked by manual labour. The “click, click” of the reaping machine is heard in every field and on every farm. The labourer no longer straightens his bent back when a stranger comes into the field and lays aside his reaping hook for a chat; he dismounts from a kind of chariot, yoked with horses, that tears through the corn and lowers it just as the old war car used to scatter the enemies of Greece and Troy. And I am candidly bound to admit that with the advance of science the reaping machine gets uglier and uglier every year. The “Inventories” has given convenience, but it has discarded beauty. Last year the farmers round about our village used a machine that was, to a certain extent, pretty and graceful enough. A farm lad in a scarlet wideawake and with a skin as brown as a berry rode the leading horse, and a labourer sat on a seat behind emptying the machine of the cut corn as it passed along the ranks, and cast the prostrate wheat in rows on the ground. But all that is done away with. The reaping machine is an animated windmill of rakes, that can be worked by a simple farm lad, without any other assistance. He merely sits still and drives the team, whilst the machine, once set going, cuts, collects and distributes with perfect regularity and order. The field of standing corn is lowered in less than no time, the fallen grain is distributed in even layers, and all that has to be done is to bind it into sheaves and to cart it homeward to the farm. But, for all that, the fun of the harvest field is not quite at an end, though reaping machines have taken the place of reapers. The standing corn yields rabbits, and the rabbits in the corn are the perquisites of the reapers—if they can catch them. I fear that rabbit hunting considerably interferes with the labour of the day. I strolled into a field where they were supposed to be cutting yesterday, and found, instead of work, an animated chase. The click of the reaping machine had stopped, the team stood still, the windmill arms were suspended in mid air, the horses were left to take care of themselves; for the driver, the binder, and half a dozen children with sticks and stones were pursuing a rabbit that had been turned out of the corn. Backwards and forwards they chased it, in and out of the corn and across the furrows. They screamed and shouted; but the rabbit was too sharp for its pursuers, and bounded over a ridge right under the nose of a little terrier dog, who got terribly excited, but ultimately lost his head when it was most wanted. These rabbit hunts occur periodically throughout the day, and they are never carried on with such eagerness as during the hour when the children from the village have brought up the midday meal, loitering by the way to gather wildflowers or to hunt for the first blackberries in the hedge. Up come the children from the cottages, each with a tin of something good in their hands for father, frightening the partridges from the gorse and fern at the roadside, and driving them to their last refuge this year in the standing barley, or to the turnips from which they will be scared next week and fall to the sportsman’s gun. The men in the harvest field are commendably sober, for the very good reason that they can get nothing strong to drink. In an area of four square miles I have only discovered one solitary public-house, so there is no means whatever of getting malt liquor. Luckily for the reapers themselves, however much they may boast the same “_dura ilia messorum_” as husbandmen did in the days of Horace, their wives are not allowed by the Excise to brew “small beer”—detestable stuff at the best; so, like sensible fellows, they fall back upon cold tea, which they drink in profusion. The best presents to distribute at harvest time are tobacco and tea. The men will bless you for one and the women for the other. Both bring eventual peace. And so the harvest day wears on. The sun gets fiercer and fiercer, and eventually dies down exhausted. The little children with their empty cans wend their way homewards. The weary men look to the west, and wonder how long the day will last. How true it is that the “low light gives the colour”! The gold of the corn, the green of the fern, the yellow of the hedge daisies, the bright purple of the thistles over which the bees are still busy, are all intensified now that the sun turns red and gradually sinks, a ball of ruddy fire, behind the village church and the old buildings of the silent farm. The reapers are still at work, the thatchers are busy in the glorious sunset, the waggons, laden with the spoils of the fields, are passing from field to farm. But the day is not nearly over. The picture is not yet complete. What remains to be said must be told when the sun has set, by the light of the “harvest moon.” XVII. A HARVEST MOON. Gleaning has gone out of fashion. I cannot speak from experience of the customs of other countries, but in this quiet corner of secluded East Anglia gleaning is either too much trouble or it does not pay. Before the reaping machine came into fashion and the silence of the countryside was disturbed with the monotonous “click” of the whirling rakes and the steady beat of the steam-engine in the rick-yard, all these boys and girls released from school and idling under the hedgerows would have been, when the sun was sinking in the harvest field, filling their print aprons or pinafores with such straw and grain as had been left when the last waggon wended its way out of the field, and bore its load to the cosy corner of the big farm. My old friend the miller tells me that when gleaning was the fashion, and the cottagers were industrious, they used to bring him up as much corn and barley to grind as would make a considerable reduction in the household expenses. Many and many a home-made loaf of bread was the result of that pleasant labour in the harvest field, when the fierce sun had sunk at the close of a lovely summer’s day. But all this is over now. Modern machinery sweeps cleaner than the newest of new brooms, and when the little children with their quick fingers, and their mothers with their capacious aprons, are turned into the harvest field to “gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost,” they discover no more than can make a satisfactory meal for the farmer’s poultry. The cocks and hens, the Michaelmas geese and the Christmas turkeys, are the only gleaners left in these days of modern machinery, so the children are reduced to beg for “largesse” from the passers-by, or to play “chuck penny” under the leafy hedges, instead of gleaning; whilst the industrious mothers, whose sunny faces and pink aprons made such an important feature in the English landscapes of William Collins and Birket Foster, find it more profitable to do a bit of washing for the visitors at the rectory cottage, or more cheerfully obtain a day’s labour up at the big house. The only gleaner I have seen as yet was an old woman walking home in the heat of the day from the village shop, where they sell everything, from sides of bacon to Balmoral boots, from crewel-worked aprons to apricot jam, who employed her time in relieving the wayside hedges of the wisps of corn that the holly and the hawthorn and the young oak had caught when the laden waggon tottered along from field to farm. But, for all that, I have a shrewd suspicion that no grain from this unauthorised gleaning will find its way to the windmill overlooking the sea, but will provide a convenient meal for the poultry that cluck outside the cottage gay with gaudy sunflowers, or be consigned to the omnivorous pigs who grunt contentedly in the sty at the back of the house. A harvest field never looks prettier than in the setting sun. When the day is nearly over, and the fierce heat is at an end, the lover of all that is picturesque in nature can revel in the fantastic tricks of colour and light. A pale primrose background is given to the harvest field. The hedgerows, the trees, the ricks, nearing completion, stand out in relief against a wall of pure light gold. Every thicket and spinney, each belt of fir trees, helps the effect of a lovely summer sunset. When the sun is high in the heavens, that deep green belt of trees round the Rookery farm, the clump of oak or silver lime that shelters the neighbouring homestead, has no special significance. We see the trees, but scarcely notice them. All is different when the sun is setting. The sinking orb finds its delight in darting its varied colours through the branches of the trees that surround an old homestead. Each day as one journeys some new effect of sunset may be noticed with delight. On the Lighthouse Cliff at Cromer, looking west over the little fisher town, a mere cluster of cottages that encircle a tall church tower, the setting sun reddens and burns, and lingers momentarily over the horizon until at last it sinks contentedly into the silent sea; in the quiet graveyard of the old church tower, where a sunset must yield the palm and the poetry to the moonlight, the full effect of colour is often interfered with by the dazzling lamp of the lighthouse, which contrasts with its bright artificial beams against the multitudinous colours of the dying day. But for the perfection of a sunset you must have trees. At the Rookery farm, girt round as it is with trees hundreds of years old, in this exquisitely peaceful enclosure, where the barns and farm buildings bear a date when Charles II. was king of England, and where in the ruined farmhouse I yesterday inspected a “priest’s hole” only recently discovered from peering down the unthatched roof, the sunset behind the encircling trees assumes a pale blue tone. The best place to see a blue sunset is at the Rookery farm. I point out its striking beauties to an unimaginative carter who is stabling his horses after carrying the corn; but he can see nothing strange or wonderful in the sight. He is most anxious just now about the bread and cheese he will get for supper after his day’s labour, and the sleep that is in store for him before he is called at daybreak. What should he care about sunsets, be they blue or pink or orange or scarlet? He lives in the one habitable corner of the Rookery farm that has been saved from ruin, in a haunted house that once was possessed by some yeomen devoted to the King’s cause, who may have hidden many a Cavalier; he knows little about pictures or politics, he looks after his horses all day, sleeps well at night, and goes to the village church on Sunday. He has a vote, and owns that it is perfectly useless to him at present. He marvels at the enthusiasm of the chance visitors to his secluded corner of the world, who have in winter-time found the first snowdrops at the foot of the rookery trees, who have rifled his hedges and meadows for primroses later on, and who stand now almost awestruck by the silence, leaning over a gate of the unreaped cornfield, and seeing a sunset that would stir the soul of a painter were imagination as profitable an investment in art as it was when Frederick Walker and George Mason told us of the country, and Burlington House was not a gallery of fashionable portraits or a nursery for artists’ babies. A sunset in August forms the proper background for the harvest picture. For the harvest men do not strike work directly the sun goes down. As the sun is dying down among the trees, or sinking behind the hill, the thatcher, standing out against the faint yellow skyline, is working on the new-made rick; the reaper in the fields where the machine cannot travel manages to appear on the top of a hillock, so as to make his bent form visible in the golden light; the labourers going home from their work are outlined against the sky; and there is not a feature on the face of nature that is not emphasized at this delightful evening hour. But, best of all, now that the day is ending and the landscape is so still, the pale and quiet harvest moon rises, undefined and indistinct as yet, over the sea out by the old church tower on the cliff. As the sun sinks lower and lower yet, the pale moon becomes more transparent in the gloaming-light. There is a short interval of silence—deep, profound and exquisitely sad. It is between the daylight and the dark, between the darkness and the day. When the sun has gone its influence is still felt. All the heavens are warm with diffused light; all the fields are aglow with a half-forgotten glory. Too brief is the interval of fading light. Then comes the turn of the moon. From extreme pallor it becomes blood red; then it turns into soft gold, and casts all objects into shadow. The hedges on either side of the leafy lane, the sunflowers and marigolds in the cottagers’ gardens, the figures of the people walking homewards, are repeated in shadow. Palings and gates are reflected in shadow in the light of the moon. How chilly it has become already, now that the sun has sunk! It is more like an October night than a harvest evening in August. A song of a cheerful labourer is heard across the fields in the exquisite silence of the evening. He chants merrily, but still in a minor key, this refrain—“Don’t forget your mother when her hair turns grey.” It has a weird and impressive effect, this labourer’s song, now that the birds are all at rest, and only whirling bats and solitary owls issue from church towers and blunder about the old farm buildings. Surely it cannot be—yes, it is—the first fire, with its warm and cosy rays dancing on the latticed windows of one of the simple cottages by the roadside. There is always something comforting and cheering in the first fire, whether the summer be over or not. Let us enter. We lift the latch, pass down a pretty garden decorated with flowers, admire an old well with its primitive bucket, and are introduced by the aged custodian into one of those blessings of modern rural life—a village club. The good squire has set apart one of his prettiest cottages for the good of the village community. He has appointed as the custodian of the club a faithful old labourer, who, but for this boon, would be in the workhouse or dependent on the bounty of his friends. Poor old fellow! he is alone in the world now. He lost his “good woman” only last year, the best companion and friend he ever had; and tears course their way down his furrowed cheeks as he goes to a drawer of an inner room and brings out for my inspection one of those simple black-and-white memorial cards that in this instance records the virtues and the death of the old man’s faithful wife. “I shall never be happy again, sir, on this side of the grave,” murmurs the poor old fellow, as he restores the relic to its hiding-place, and totters back again to the fire. “But God’s will be done.” Luckily he is well enough to potter about the newspapers that are provided for the members of the village club. A married daughter comes up every day to look after the old man and tidy him up a bit, and his great age and authority enforce order at night-time, when the village lads come up to spell over the paper, to look at the illustrated prints, and to get as much amusement and instruction, as much light and warmth, as they can for the smallest possible subscription. Of course the village club is better patronised in the long winter nights than in summer-time. When harvest is about there is scarcely time to consult the daily or the illustrated weekly papers, to enjoy the simple books of the library, or to play draughts or dominoes. But the little cottage is full to overflowing when the days are short and there is nothing to do from leaving work until the most reasonable bedtime. The only occupant of the village club-room was an orphan lad that the old custodian had housed out of charity. When I entered, the motherless child was busy playing dominoes by himself, and the old man was engaged in stirring the bright embers of the first autumn fire with his walking-stick. He had much to say, and many a yarn to spin about old times and new; but the day was closing fast, and I left them—the old man by the fire, and the lonely little lad at his solitary game—and once more tramped homeward on the road. The moon has risen higher now, and has left the sea for the land. How peacefully it shines over the gravestones of the cliff churchyard, and lights up the lonely and forgotten tower! Here, to this old tower, in winter-time, they bring the bodies of the sailors washed up on the shore; and it serves as a village mortuary until the inquest can be held, and they are buried in the far corner of the deserted graveyard. Although the moon is high in the heavens, the silence is so profound that above the moaning of the sea at the foot of the cliff I can hear the song of the last labourer going homewards by himself, or accompanying the latest load of corn to the distant farmyard. Here one might remain for hours—here in this place, at this deserted corner of the world—if it were not for the prosaic pains of hunger. As I walk through the village in the moonlight, and count the lighted windows as I pass, disturbing a dog here, and receiving a cheery “Good-night, sir,” from each labourer at his cottage door, I wonder what the bright-faced “Maid of the Mill,” the miller’s daughter, who is indefatigable in her care of the stranger, will have to-night for the hungry pedestrian, who has trudged many a mile to-day over cliff and farm and field. A dip down through the village, a rise up to the mill, a glimpse of the distant sea, and at last the white palings and the gate, whiter than ever now in the moonlight. How cheerful the pretty house looks, with its one lighted window on the ground floor! The lamps are burning brightly. No gas desecrates this peaceful dwelling, and—capital thought—on this chilly evening for me also there is the first fire burning cheerfully in the wide, open grate. Ornaments and shavings are cast aside, and the bright gleam of the fire is cast upon the snowy tablecloth, the silver, and the glass. And what do you say to this for a farmhouse supper, you Sybarites who imagine that nothing can be obtained except at an hotel, with fancy prices and ornamental waiters? A bright red lobster, small and delicate—it was caught this morning under the old church cliffs, and was boiled in the farmhouse kitchen this afternoon—a boiled chicken, also off the estate, and, as a special treat, a blackberry pudding, the fruit gathered from the hedges by the school children in exchange for an occasional _largesse_ of pennies! Not bad that for a farmhouse cuisine, the supper washed down with an improvised cup of Apollinaris and Norfolk cider. And so, after a pipe over the fire, to bed. Not quite yet. Who would shut out, even when it is chilly, so exquisite a night or so beautiful a harvest moon? Close the door that separates the moonlit garden from the quiet household, and let us enjoy once more the peace and rest of such a night. The moon has risen to the very top of the sails of the old black mill. It is as light as day. On the other side of the white road the fields of uncut barley stand out against the hills of fern in the clear, pure moonlight. All the flowers are closed and asleep except the evening primrose, that shines forth like a star among the dew-covered roses. The apples on the young trees are reflected in shadow on the garden path. Do holiday-seekers elsewhere find anything much better than this—anything purer or more peaceful—though they journey to the nightless regions of Norway or to the still mountain homes of Switzerland? The sea continues its ceaseless moaning, the revolving lamp on the lighthouse tower casts a pathway of bright gold over the fields. Nature is at rest in the silence that is deeply felt. We are in the harvest fields of England, and is it not still true that “there is no place like home”? XVIII. LEANING OVER A GATE. A CHRISTMAS REVERIE. Leaning over a gate! That is my remedy for over-work, depression, worry and all the nervous ills that nineteenth-century flesh is heir to. It is all very well for people who have nothing to do, whose knocker and door-bell are never agitated, who don’t have to spend two or three valuable hours every day attending to the business of other people, reading other men’s plays, giving advice on clever women’s novels, attending to begging letters, pleading letters, bullying letters, corresponding with people you have never heard of before and are never likely to hear of again, receiving letters of introduction from comparative strangers to interest yourself in the case of some unfortunate man who has come to grief—poor fellow!—or some infatuated woman who wants to go on the stage—silly creature!—in order to make her future life miserable—it is all very well, I say, for those who are never worried, and don’t know what it means to tell you to pull yourself together and to brave it out, or that it won’t last long, and that “other people have to work as well as you,” or one or other of the ordinary well-meaning but utterly useless platitudes that are offered for one’s consolation. It is because you do pull yourself together, and you do brave it out, and that it does last long, horribly, unbearably long, that you are worried. A learned doctor in one of the scientific magazines recommends the overworked man whose time is precious to take what is called a “long lie in bed”; in fact, to remain between the sheets all day. I have tried that plan, but do not recommend it. On a foggy Sunday in an attic in the City it might be possible. But at home, never. You can’t muffle the knocker or silence the street bell, or put down straw in the streets,—that would be too ridiculous. When you are in bed beyond the legitimate hour, you feel that you are secretly despised in the household, and that you are a bore and a nuisance to every one connected with you. Half asleep and unable to rest, tossing about and feverish, you are dimly conscious of everything that is going on. There are mysterious whisperings and hushings, and an ill-concealed attempt to keep the house quiet. The whole domestic machinery has been put out of gear, simply because you are resting. The postman keeps knocking, and you wonder what worry is in the letter-box awaiting you. The bell rings, and you imagine a thousand disasters have happened. The housemaid, you know, is inwardly cursing you. When will she be able to make the bed? When can she ever “get dressed” to-day? And then the meals. You can’t starve, and eating in bed is abominable as well as uncomfortable. If you lean on one arm the other shoulder gets cold; and then the crumbs! Horrible! It is nonsense to say that you are quiet in bed, for you are haunted with the thought that you are an abominable nuisance to everybody, causing endless questions and answers, disturbing every one’s meals, necessitating a “tray being sent up,” which, of course, has to be fetched down again; for there is no domestic article that the well-conducted servant worries herself so much about as the tea-tray; seeing the daylight fade into the afternoon, and feeling the darkness steal into the night. No; I hate being in bed in the middle of the day. I detested it as a child, when we were put to bed in the morning, I suppose to get rid of us and keep us quiet,—when they vainly tried to shut out the sunlight with curtains, and the omnibuses and cabs used to pass across the ceiling in broad bands of light, and I could fancy I could see the tall men and the short men, the women and the children, as they passed one another like shadowy ghosts across the ceiling of the torture chamber. I have another remedy for over-work. It is an old game of mine since I can remember anything distinctly. I call it the game of imagination. When I was very young and very small I used to go by myself to a day school in Theberton Street, Islington. It was a good step for a youngster from the New North Road; and I hated that lonely walk in the early morning across the Shepherdess Fields almost as much as I loathed the school. So I got over the difficulty by a wonderful process of daily imagination. When I turned round the corner into the New North Road I began to be somewhere else, and pretended to be acting a totally different scene. The “long unlovely” road, the Favourite omnibuses, the bridge over the canal where I used to study the coloured theatrical posters of the Grecian and Albert and Britannia saloons; the pathetic pictures of “Pity the Sorrows of a Poor Old Man,” a drama I always wanted to see; the long and dreary Shepherdess Fields where there were no sheep, and not a trace of Mopsa, and they only made bricks for Mr. Rydon’s building operations,—all these things vanished when my imagination dream began. In the morning I was at Stony Stratford years before, a lonely but very happy little boy. I was watching, curled up on a window-sill with the faithful dog Spot, the old inn over the way where the covered Buckinghamshire carts stopped on market day. I was playing by myself in an old deserted coach-house, at the end of the long garden, where there reposed a dusty old phaeton that had not been used for years, pretending to be coachman and passenger and guard by turns, a day-dream within a day-dream. Long before I had arrived at the dreadful door in Theberton Street round the corner, I had in my dream walked across the meadows from Stony Stratford to the pretty old church at Passenham. I had heard the sermon preached by a fine old parson of another age, who sometimes wore his surplice over his pink hunting coat. I had spent a happy afternoon at the doctor’s over the way, where a charming and affectionate little girl, the doctor’s daughter, used to take me off to the strawberry beds and try to make me ill, out of pure affection. Girls are so unselfish when they are in love. I had lived another delightful day at Castle Thorpe, at a dear old farm among the hayfields, where I fell desperately in love—children do such odd things—with the pretty young mother of my little companions; and so, by dreaming and imagining and living old scenes over again, I arrived at the dreaded schoolhouse, heard the fatal bell, and the awful crutches of the head master coming down the covered passage that led from his house to the schoolroom. How dreadfully frightened that good man George Darnell did make me!—though I believe he had the kindest heart in the world, and invented a patent copy-book with the aid of the brains of Mr. Smith, a clever writing-master. On the return journey, when the school door banged behind me, and I was off home with a blue watered merino school bag over my shoulder, I seemed to say to myself, “Now where shall I be” on the road home? Should I be going down to Barking, in Essex, by the coach that started from the Bull Inn at Aldgate during the holidays, or should I be at an old Manor House in Ilford, among the great kind girls who petted and spoiled me so dreadfully? I liked the Manor House dream the best; for though I was dreadfully shy when I was really down there, and used to colour up at dinner when they chaffed me about my favourite amongst these affectionate girls, and I thought the master of the house was rather a tyrant, still I never shall forget those rambles in the old Ilford Manor House garden, never will fade away the memory of the sweet girl who sang to me in the old drawing-room, and who, with her fair hair and great blue eyes, her plaintive voice and her inexpressible tenderness, seemed to be then—as she may be now—an angel! So thirty years after these days of childhood I find myself indulging in this same old game of imagination. It is a more expensive luxury than it used to be, for it necessitates a journey out of London. In the old days it was done to deaden the dread of school. Now it is attempted in order to relieve the mind from pressing care and worry. After all it only requires a railway ticket and a packed dressing bag. When I am desperately done up or overworked I rush away and play truant, as it were. I make no preparation, but decide in an instant and bolt. Before I have arrived at the railway station the first clouds have disappeared from my brain; on the journey down to the land of rest composure has settled down on me; before nightfall, when I am leaning over the gate, I am at peace with myself and all mankind. Leaning over a gate! It is always the same gate of the same old deserted farm in the loveliest corner of England known to mortal man. I call it the Rookery Farm, but in reality it is no farm at all, only a ruined house with some deserted rooms that carters and ploughmen inhabit, but surrounded by superb old flint-built barns of the seventeenth century, approached by an avenue of trees almost all decayed, fringed about with sad fir trees and stone pines that assist the landscape. A lonely farm, in a little hollow away from the road, away from all signs of human habitation; a farm from whose upper windows you can see the sea—a farm that in days gone by must have been one of the prettiest spots in all England. Leaning over a gate! It would be difficult to say how many times I have “leaned over this gate” at various seasons of the year. Under the little avenue of stone pines that leads to the gate I have gathered the first snowdrops I could find nestling in a deep, dark green patch at the root of some wind-tossed tree. In the meadows that surround the farm, in the hedgerows, round and about the lanes, I have walked over acres of primroses and sheets of blue hyacinth. Here, leaning over this gate, I have seen the hay come home in June, and the corn in August. Here I have stood sadly in the autumn desolation as the leaves in the old avenue fluttered to my feet. Here have I seen them cutting up the mangolds for the winter cattle fodder, and here at Christmas I have tramped round the muddy lanes and cattle paths, scarcely meeting a soul, seldom seeing a human being save one handsome, stalwart carter, who came here years ago from the other side of the county, who is never tired of telling you of his miraculous journey with his horses, who has scarcely ever been four miles from the village, who knows absolutely nothing of the world, and who, if he is puzzled about anything at all, it is concerning the mysterious stranger who at odd times and seasons, without warning or system, suddenly appears upon this peaceful scene, and leans contentedly over the gate. Silence prevails. The beasts are feeding in their stalls. A labourer creeps round the deserted homestead. Every footfall can be heard. Suddenly I appear, and lean over the gate. The man—this lonely carter on the deserted farm—looks up. “Hallo! sir! you here again?” This is all he says. It does not surprise him. He is not particularly interested in these mysterious visitations. He has his horses to look after, to do his work, to eat his bacon, and to get to bed. It is nothing to him that a stranger is visiting the old farm; he cares nothing about London, or the world, or the news. The strange man has come again, and there will be a shilling or so for a drink of beer on Saturday night; but that is all. But the strangest part of it all is that I scarcely know how I got to the Rookery Farm, any more than the dull, unimaginative man who lifts his eyes from his work, and says, without excitement, “Hallo! sir! you here again?” In the morning I was in the roar and excitement and anxiety and turmoil of London. I have been mysteriously conveyed in a train, with one eye on a newspaper and the other on the passing landscape, with one part of the mind on the world and another on the country. I have lived a dozen lives in the old mansions and quiet villages I have passed on the road. I have wondered whether the peace of the village has brought the happiness that I believe it should contain. I have seen the spires of two noble cathedrals, and pondered on the simplicity of cloister life in an old-world town. I have envied porters and stationmasters and farmers and sober village politicians. And best of all, I have seen the sea. If the brain were restless before it is quiet now. If the head ached up to this moment, the pain is at an end. I have stood on the edge of a cliff looking over the grey, cold and illimitable sea. The same sound, the same pulse, the same monotonous music, the same comforting message. The roar and riot of London are counteracted by this wild heaving of the sea upon this melancholy and deserted beach. But I cannot stay at the edge of the cliff for ever. I must press on to the Rookery Farm. All this corner of the earth seems mine. It is as much mine as the park of a nobleman, or the estate of a millionaire. Here I come, and no one interferes with me. I never meet a soul on the cliff; the lands and fields and lanes are desolate. Within a stone’s throw of the cliff corner where I go to visit the sea, within a few hundred yards of the deserted churchyard, where “a tower in ruins stands guard o’er the deep,” there stands the only house where I should like to pass my days. They call it the “Highlands,” and I think it is the most picturesquely situated house I have ever seen. It is a little, low, old-fashioned, red-brick house, sheltered in by trees, with a lawn-tennis ground in front overlooking the sea,—a quiet, detached, ideal home. Fancy a house surrounded by cornfields, perched on the top of an undulating country, with the sails of an old windmill in the foreground, a quiet fishing village sleeping in the hollow, and away in the distance, visible from every window in the front, the sea, the sea, the everlasting, limitless, vast horizon of sea! There is a diminutive carriage drive, there are barns and outhouses at the back, there is a miniature wilderness around the house, where in springtime the rich green undergrowth of grass is starred with daffodils. It is near civilisation, and yet away from it. I have never entered the house in my life; but I have lived in it scores of times in imagination. Here at the window, overlooking lawn and cornfield and windmill and sea, I have written novels and songs, and spent a delightful, peaceful life away from the turmoil of town. Now let me get on, turning my back for the moment from the cliff’s edge and the sea. Here are the two farmhouses side by side, one with casement diamond-paned windows, wholly surrounded with ivy; the other with a solitary stone eagle perched in an embrasure of the barn. Here is the village church, removed farther inland for fear it would topple over with the receding cliff. Here, half a mile on, is the village clubhouse in a one-story cottage; on still farther, another sea-cliff village with another beacon tower, and then, turn off the main road skirting a hedge, across a new-ploughed field, down the pine avenue, till at last the gate! It is Christmas time, and this must have been a rare place for jollity in the days of old. I walked about the ruined farm some years ago. The shutters were pulled down for my inspection; and groping about in the dusk, I disturbed the old owls that had settled in the ruined home. Quaint old mantelpieces, curious staircases, mysterious passages, a “priest’s hole,” told of times when religion was anything but a liberty, and often ended in a martyrdom. There was until very recently a hedge of box that surrounded the Rookery Farm, so stout and strong that a carriage could have been driven on the top of it. But they cut it down and carted it away when the farmhouse went to ruin, and the carters took possession of the outbuildings. What Christmas fun, what revelry, what good cheer must have echoed about the grand old mansion! I can see the old waggon coming down the avenue laden with relations. I can see the farmer standing at the door with a good old British welcome. I can see the farm servants bringing in the holly and the mistletoe and the Yule log. I can hear the horsemen plashing through the mud, and the laughter from the pillion behind. What quaint dresses! what old-fashioned chivalry! what patches of bright colour on the wintry scene! what dances after dinner! what toasts on Christmas Eve! what love, what loyalty in the good old times of old! I can see it all, hear it all, imagine it all, as I lean this Christmastide over the old farm gate, and hear nothing but the lowing of the oxen in their stalls, the moaning of the wind among the trees, the “Good-night, sir,” of the carter, who closes his cottage door, and leaves me in the darkness and alone. The feeble sun has sunk behind the grove of fir trees that fringe the farm. The last orange and purple glow has died away. Still I stand leaning over the gate. I have to get back to the world, and have done with dreaming. It is the present, not the past. It is an age when men are not quite so kind or charitable to their neighbours, when the competition is keener and the race swifter. It is a time when strong men trust more to their implements than their bravery, when they fight with arms of precision and sheltered by armour-plated ships. The old plough of Virgil is there still up in the corner; but the labourer has to idle whilst agricultural machinery is at work, sending up its noisome smoke and destroying the peace of the countryside. Sadder and sadder the scene becomes as the darkness settles down. An owl flies out of the farm buildings, and makes his way across the fields. The bells of Christmas ring out from the village church. The past mingles with the present. Loved voices seem to whisper in my ears. Faces of long ago arise before me. Scenes of days gone by occur again. The moon sails out from the wintry clouds to guide me home. And, lifting my head from my arms, I arise from my reverie leaning over the gate. XIX. AMONG THE BLOSSOMS. There comes a moment in the anxious life of every toiler when he feels the truth of those often-quoted lines in Tennyson’s “Golden Year”: “But well I know that unto him who works, and feels he works, this same grand year is ever at the doors.” That moment has arrived: the caged and imprisoned feeling, the longing to get away, the restless desire to see the fields, and to be in the presence of the calm and peace of Nature. It is one of those days of intense longing that a long-delayed springtime gives. The force of the cruel east wind has been broken; London has assumed its air of summer laziness. Over the way a screen of young leaves has almost hidden the garden square, which I have watched the weary winter past; the laughter of lawn-tennis players comes up to me, sitting as I am in my lonely rooms; the lilacs are in bloom; the sense of solitude is almost intolerable. So I resolve to play truant, to break away from work, and “to find the hollows where those flowers grew”—to recall, in some measure, the almost buried pleasures of the past. But where am I to go in order to give as much variety as possible to a stolen holiday? I recall my old haunts, happy in the past, and never revisited without a pleasant recollection. To an imprisoned Londoner, who feels sometimes the loss of country life, there are spots not so very far afield that kindly assist the imagination made sensitive by spring. I could take you to hidden corners in the Regent’s Park, round about the inner circle, where you might believe you were miles and miles from town: I have seen sunsets at Kensington Gardens that no landscape painter should despise. I can recall an evening at the cockney Welsh Harp, at Hendon, by the lake, on an off day, when no living creature was there to disturb the peace of the scene, that will live long in the memory. And who shall take from me the pictures, clear and distinct to the mind, of the avenue of lime trees at the Hampton end of Bushey Park, of the river terrace in Hampton Court Gardens when the holiday folks had gone home, of days at Hatfield, and of calm, still evenings by the riverside at Purfleet, where from a pretty balcony one can see the sun sinking on the river and the great ships going out to sea? This gives me an idea: it shall be the Charles Dickens country to-day, the favoured Gravesend district, the track of blossom-land so little known to the careless holiday-maker, who alone connects this favourite haunt of mine with Rosherville and roses, with shrimps and boiling water. There is a convenient train at midday, and an impetuous telegram has brought to the Charing Cross station an old friend, a more than friend, a second self, so sympathetic and so valued that the day gets a new delight from looking once more on so familiar a face. The Charing Cross railway station, with its continental traffic, its sense of summer holidays, its coupons and its business of going abroad, has given me envious thoughts before now. I have been tempted sometimes, when weary with imprisonment, to stand on the platform, and “make believe” that my turn had come, and the August holiday was at hand. But not to-day. I envy no man anything, for now that I have found my friend there is no projected plan that I would exchange with any one for this. A return ticket to Paris only gives one five shillings change out of a five-pound note; to-day I am far happier with a half-crown return ticket to Gravesend. London and all its associations are so soon lost in a railway train, that I wonder people require to make up their minds so long before they break away. Half an hour gives one exactly the change that was wanted. How lovely these fruit trees look in bloom by Dartford and Eltham; the virgin white of the cherry, the waxen pink of the apple; every scrap of garden ground, round the old farms, in the meadows, where the church spires peep out, the most beautiful flowers of the early year are seen. Just this side of Northfleet there is a reclaimed chalk quarry, so full of flowering fruit trees that it is indeed a perfect picture—the crown of the blossom-land so far. The day favours us marvellously well; a thick mist by Bermondsey threatened our peace of mind for a moment, but following the river we have found the sun shining more gloriously than ever. At Gravesend a carriage is awaiting us, for there is no time to linger here. We are not of the Rosherville set, ready to dance on platforms and seek the wizard’s cave; we are not due on board the _Paramatta_, or bound as emigrants for a distant land; we have no time to-day to chat to the old pilots on the pier-head, or to take their telescopes and look seaward; yachting and such-like pleasures must come another day. “Drive to Gadshill!” is the direction to our old coachman, and in a few minutes we are away from the trippers and the emigrants, from the fishermen and the shrimp sellers, from the crowds of idlers and loafers, with the sea-breeze in our faces, the river on the left hand side, the woods and meadows on the right, along that old country road towards Rochester that Dickens tramped for so many years. How the old times come back again as we drive along the familiar road! Nothing seems to be changed. Here are the gipsies stretched out in the sun, and sleeping on the greensward underneath the hedge; here is Mrs. Jarley’s yellow caravan; here, down a by-lane, is old Chalk church, with its ancient ornaments; the little roadside wood, where in old days the bluebells grew—see, the village children are ankle deep in blue flowers now, and half-buried in the grass; the coppice, where I veritably believe I first heard the nightingale; and far away up the road, look, there is the cedar of Lebanon, in the enclosed garden opposite the roadside house where Charles Dickens lived and worked and died. The same stillness, the same solitude, the same singular charm that fascinated a man who has made us familiar with every acre of this country. It is lunch-time, so let us see what kind of fare can be found at the Falstaff, the famous half-way house to Rochester, where every trap and Londoner seems to stop for a glass of ale. It used to be kept by as civil a fellow as ever lived—one Brown, who in the old days past served us with many a dinner and supper at the Cheshire Cheese, in Fleet Street; and, bless my life, why, there he is yet, looking as young as ever; although, to judge by the olive branches that meet us on the stairs, friend Brown has his quiver full enough of them. A glass of Kentish ale, some bread and cheese, and a fresh salad from the Falstaff garden, is all we want to-day; and while it is preparing let us look out of the old inn window and indulge in dreams again. There is the window at which Dickens worked; there is the bird-haunted garden where Fechter built for his friend a Swiss châlet in which he could write in peace in summer-time; and over there, far beyond the house and grounds, fringing the horizon, are the woods and the park which we shall visit presently, if all be well. I have noticed before the strange silence that invests Gadshill with so singular a charm. It is a high road; it is a busy road; it is full of tramps and gipsies; there is ever a passing and repassing; but as we look out of the old inn window we hear the everlasting chorus of the birds, we breathe the flower-laden air, and we positively feel the silence looking over to the distant woods. It is not restlessness that makes us press on,—no mere desire of change; only an intense desire to see still more of Nature and to be still more alone. The horse is refreshed, and so are we. “Good-day, mine host! We shall be back again one day, please God; but to-day we are off to Cobham Park, and already the day is on the wing.” Our driver knows the way without any guidance. Soon we are off the high road again. Skirting the old house of Dickens, past the stable-yard, where the fierce dogs used to terrify the tramp; past the tennis-ground, newly made in the adjacent paddock, where an enthusiastic parson is playing—as parsons will play—in a grey flannel shirt and braces; and quickly we are in the very heart of the lovely Kentish lanes. No more high road; no more dust; nothing now but old-fashioned farms and cottages, old-fashioned flowers and fruit-tree blossoms; no one out and about, no one to disturb us until the Jehu stops at a step-stile at the edge of the park. “Now, sir, if you really want to enjoy a walk, take the path straight across the grass there, skirt the old house, and I will meet you in the village of Cobham.” It was the best advice we had that day. To have missed that walk would have been to lose a recollection. Again, the intense silence of the place, the sweetness of the air, the softness of the carpet underneath our feet, the deer sheltering under the young trees from the afternoon sun, the cattle browsing on the slopes of the hill, the cuckoo calling on this side and immediately answered on the other, the murmur of the drowsy bee, honey-laden from the meadow, and ever and again the peep of the grand old Elizabethan house of darkened red, with its background of dark trees, make up a picture which on such a day passes all description. Shall you of all others, old friend of mine, forget that walk and all its meaning? Will you not remember it well, whatever fate stores up for us? Will it not bring me back to you, as it must bring you back to me, in the dim future, when one or other of us must sleep the first? And then, close by the old-world village of Cobham, there is a wood, where we shall find the flowers we have come to seek. The primroses have not yet gone; and there are enough bluebells here to fill the carriage that is waiting at the inn—masses and clusters of them bending their lovely heads under the benediction of the evening sun. This is the kind of wood in which any one who loves Nature could spend a day of surpassing pleasure; and it cannot be wondered that we make mental note of a lattice-windowed cottage at the village corner, where it is recorded that “furnished apartments” are to let. After such a day there is no sadder word than “home,” at least to us, flower-laden as we are. The sun is sinking now, the flowers are closing, and on the river terrace, in a pretty garden facing the Clarendon Hotel, we can watch together the ships passing out to sea under a sunset of supreme grandeur and touching melancholy. Only to ourselves will ever be known the words spoken in the stillness of that lovely evening; only to ourselves will be confided the “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” Voices are heard across the water, answering one another, as the daylight dies. The sky changes from gold and crimson to deep purple, then into black; a bell is rung from a river steamer at the pier; there is a song as a pleasure party rows across the river; lights come out amongst the shipping; the day is done: alas! we must go home! XX. “THE GARDEN OF SLEEP.” There is a corner of old England that is especially dear to me, a quiet, dream-haunted, restful spot, where the air seems to be purer, the scene more full of peace, the villagers more contented, and the homes more hospitable than I have found to be the case elsewhere in my many wanderings. Nowhere else have I seen such bunches of snowdrops in the forest ways; such banks of primrose in the sheltered mossy lanes within sound of the ceaseless sea; such carpets of bluebells or wild hyacinth round and about the coppices, that seem “like heaven up-breaking through the earth”; such corners starred in springtime with daffodils; such gardens bright in sunshine with clarksia and French marigold, pale in the moonlight with the evening primrose; such fields of waving corn growing within an inch of the cliff; such acres of sleep-laden poppies; such cosy homes, or such sheltered farms. But why say much more of a place that has been immortalised by such a coiner of sweet words and such a singer of the sea as Algernon Charles Swinburne, who here found an inspiration for his “Midsummer Holiday”? Just outside the village, crowned by a hillock that supports a famous windmill, working your way past a farm, the summer residence of many a grateful holiday-maker, you come to a deserted churchyard at the very edge of the cliff. For centuries this little corner of the cliff-land, this God’s acre, this “Garden of Sleep,” planted round with wild poppies, had held the village church. Here the oldest inhabitant of the seaside village has been baptized; here he will rest when his toiling time is over; here generations of this hamlet in East Anglia had been married, and kept harvest festivals, and been tolled home when labour was over. But there came a time, not so many years ago, when it was reported that the cliff was falling in, that the sea was gradually advancing on the land, and that it was high time to pull down the old church, the lych-gate, the village sanctuary, and rebuild farther inland. For my own part, I cannot help thinking that these fears were unduly precipitate. Many years must elapse before the “Garden of Sleep” will tumble down cliff into the mud and sand; and I am sorry that the work of devastation began so soon—as, except at Tintagel, in Cornwall, I have never seen a church and churchyard so near the “melancholy ocean.” However, it was done. The church was destroyed, and re-erected farther inland. Just as these vandals were about to pull down the round flint-built Norfolk tower, an order came swiftly down from the Master of the Trinity House, forbidding the destruction of the landmark, as well known to sailors as the famous lighthouse itself. The ecclesiastical authorities might do what they liked about the church, but the Marine authorities prevented any interference with the tower. So the “tower by the sea” remained intact, and there it stands to this day in a deserted churchyard, where the graves of the old parishioners, the dead women and men of the seaside village, the sailors tossed up on the sands at wreck time, the unknown, the unburied dead, receive the hospitality of rest, the comfort of earth, the green covering of grass and flowers. The spot is so eminently picturesque—a deserted churchyard among the cornfields, a garden of sleep among the poppies; it is so impressive on the brightest day in summer, so still on the calmest moonlit night, that on one occasion I conceived a song suggested by the situation and its surroundings. I pictured a solitary man standing in the churchyard, surrounded by sea, cliff, villages and poppies, waiting for and lamenting the loss of the woman he loved. I print the song as it was originally written, and before it was set to music, and I will explain why I do so afterwards:— THE GARDEN OF SLEEP. (A Summer Song.) “Wherever men are noble they love bright colour, and wherever they can live healthily bright colour is given them in sky, sea, flowers, and living creatures.”—RUSKIN, “On Poppies” (_Proserpina_). God planted a garden—a garden of sleep! ’Neath the blue of the sky, in the green of the corn, It is there that the regal-red poppies are born! Brief days of desire, and long dreams of delight, They are mine when my Poppy Land cometh in sight, In music of distance, with eyes that are wet, It is there I remember, and there I forget. O heart of my heart! where the poppies are born I am waiting for thee, in the hush of the corn. Sleep! Sleep! From the cliff to the deep! Sleep, my Poppy Land, Sleep! In my garden of sleep, where red poppies are spread, I wait for the living, alone with the dead, For a tower in ruins stands guard o’er the deep At whose feet are green graves of dear women asleep; Did they love as I love when they lived by the sea? Did they wait as I wait for the days that may be? Was it hope, or fulfilling, that entered each breast Ere death gave release, and the poppies gave rest? O life of my life! on the cliffs by the sea, By the graves in the grass I am waiting for thee. Sleep! Sleep! In the dews by the deep! Sleep, my Poppy Land, Sleep! Now, I flattered myself—alas! in vain—that I had caught here the poetic features of the landscape, the cliffs, the sea, the ruined tower, the deserted churchyard, the grassy graves. I had vainly imagined that I had pictured in this curious and lovely scene a man waiting and longing for an absent woman. Alas for the vanity of human wishes! The poem was destined to be misunderstood. Soon after the verses were published, my friend, Mr. Isidore de Lara, saw them, took a fancy to them, set them to music, and became the author, as most know, of one of the most popular of modern songs. For the composer, all was well; right justly did he earn his success. But, from the moment the song was issued from the vast establishment of Messrs. Chappell, I have scarcely enjoyed one peaceful week. Nearly every post brings me letters from people who are delighted with the music, but cannot tell what on earth I mean by the words. I have to decide bets on this point and on that, and to settle in my judicial position warm and animated dinner-table discussions. No one, apparently, can make out head or tail of the _raison d’être_ of my garden of sleep. Young ladies write me angry letters from Brighton boarding-schools, abusing me sky high for my unintelligibility and my nonsense. One indignant correspondent, probably not much of a botanist or a classical scholar, asks me “what on earth poppies have got to do with sleep”; another begs me to say whether “it is a ‘he,’ a ‘she,’ or an ‘it’ that is waiting, and for whom?” a third indignantly propounds the question why only “‘dear women’ should be asleep, and why poor dear men should not be at rest also?” These questions do not spring from ill-informed or ill-educated correspondents, but from all classes of the community. The last dinner-table discussion I had to decide was forwarded to me by the host, who dated his very courteous letter from the Carlton Club, and assured me in confidence—which I now deliberately break—that the general impression at the dinner table was that the verses were “_the dream of an opium eater_.” This was too much for me; so I threw myself on the mercy of my editor, and implored him to allow me to make an explanation combating a charge of idiocy on the one hand or drug-imbibing on the other. I wanted to steer a safe middle course between De Quincey, Coleridge, and an idiot! By the generous courtesy of an editorial friend I am enabled to unburden my sorrows, and possibly, should this explanation fall under the eyes of the ladies who sing the song, they will offer for it this humble and, I trust, intelligible explanation. The very existence of the difficulty in a great measure justifies the objection so often made by spirited publishers to modern songs which in any way stray from the beaten track of commonplace—for anything in the slightest degree imaginative is hateful to song publishers. He is the caterer for the determined Philistine. I once called an orchard of white May blossom “the snows of Spring,” and the publisher asked me if I were mad, as snow only came in winter. Only the other day, writing again about the sea, and strolling over poppied cliffs, I said, “Look, love! the poppies doze above the Bay!” whereupon a musical critic asked me if I meant a “bay-tree,” a “bay-window,” or “bay-rum.” No, they understand that Jack goes out to sea, prays for his wife, and comes home again; they comprehend all about grandmother’s darling or Dolly’s delight; they can fathom the mystery of a couple meeting in verse 1, marrying in verse 2, and going to paradise in verse 3; but the dear good music publishers who keep poetry out of songs and melody out of music have so washed out and diluted the imagination of their patrons that they cannot comprehend that a garden of sleep may mean a churchyard, and that a poppy has been called an emblem of death! But perhaps I am wrong and they are right: possibly I am too mystical, and they not too literal at all. It is on the cards that the words of the song really are rubbish, as my correspondents tell me they are, and that no ordinarily sane person can make head or tail of them. Who shall decide? Meanwhile, here is my explanation, and may it be scattered as broadcast as its graceful, persuasive melody. XXI. AMONG THE CORNFIELDS. There are worse moments in the life of a man “who works and feels he works” than the awakening after ten good hours of refreshing and unbroken sleep, and the surveying of the summer landscape from the open window of a farmhouse by the sea. In this silent corner of East Anglia I appear to be at the very end of the world. It is lonely as Tintagel, as breezy as Boscastle. Two miles away, over the fern-covered down, away by the ruined, ivy-covered church, and past the bright white lighthouse that stands amidst acres of soft, velvety turf and yellow sea-daisies, the shrimp man and the lobster-catcher are arousing Cromer from its slumbers. The old church clock in the fine old flint tower, common to the county of Norfolk, is doubtless chiming eight, accompanied as an afterthought by a few bars from Spohr’s “As pants the hart”; they are taking down the shutters at the chemist’s, where everything is to be obtained, from patent pills to boot-blacking and from calomel to curry powder. At Cromer they are getting out the early bathing-machines; the coastguardsmen on the cliff are surveying miles and miles of purple and waveless sea with an everlasting telescope; the crowded lodging-houses and hotels are relieving themselves of the restless and the early risers; the market women are bringing in their little store of French beans, plums and greengages. At Cromer already there is a stirring spirit and a suspicion of noise, a clattering of little spades and pails, and a scampering to the yellow sands and the beneficent beach. In the farmhouse garden where I rest there is not a stir and not a sound. The front flower garden, separated from the road and its blackberry hedges by a row of white palings and a brighter white gate, seems revelling in the first touches of the August sunshine. Bees are busy with the lavender, and are coquetting with the brilliant French marigolds and deep purple carnations. The roses are almost over now, save on one low corner bush that will yield a yellow crop of Marechal Niel from this moment until Christmas Day. A bed of mauve-coloured clarksia, a rival bed decorated with stocks—“with homely cottage smell”—verbenas, seedums, and the early flowering asters, are visited by bees and butterflies alike; the birds are calling one another from hedge to hedge, and so peaceful and beautiful is the scene that the darting house martins who have built in the eaves of the old farmhouse, although collecting for their departure to sunnier climes, seem disinclined to leave this warm corner of the England that they love. But look beyond the garden enclosure to the fields that slope towards the distant hills. On a small green platform crowning a field of waving barley stands the windmill, seen for miles around, the most picturesque feature in this sunny landscape, and as yet whirling round in its old-fashioned way, careless of the counter-advantages of machinery and steam. The good old miller has had no cause to regret the opening weeks of this present August. It has blown steadily, fitfully and in gusts. Sometimes dark rainclouds have drifted from sea to hill, scattering spray or rain dust rather than rain; sometimes a deep indigo thundercloud has sailed from the west, emptying itself on the parched fields, but making little impression ten minutes afterwards on the dry and hungry soil. But whenever there has been sun—and we have not had too much of it this summer—there has been a bright, brisk breeze, bending down the apple trees in the garden, bowing down the corn in the fields, and sending the light fleecy clouds scudding along over the windmill top and away into the heart of the country. The young farmer next door is already out with his gun, walking by the hedge-side up to the ferny plantation to see if he can catch a rabbit on the feed and help to stock the larder at home. Next month’s Michaelmas geese are gobbling in the only field not under cultivation, keeping a respectable distance from a family of young turkeys growing up for next Christmas dinner, and paying no attention to the silent cattle or to the old mare with its young foal, who claim the privilege of eating their breakfasts between the same hedges. So much for the front of the house this quiet summer morning. Let us look out at the back. See, we are only a couple of hundred yards from the cliff’s edge, fringed with cornfields and decorated with scarlet poppies and mauve-coloured scabious. It will want another good ten days’ sun to ripen the wheat, that now shows a lovely tone between dead green and a deep brownish yellow. From the upper windows I can see a vast expanse of purple ocean covered with herring boats starting on their annual journey to the North Sea, well manned with sailors from the little village yonder, whose wives will not see them again until Christmas time most likely, but every Saturday will punctually trudge to the agents at Cromer to draw their weekly house-money. Soon after Lammas Day they are all off, and cannot wait to give a hand at the oncoming harvest, even if they were wanted; for, to tell the truth, the farmer who is a practical man never calls upon the services of a sailor in the harvest field unless he is uncommonly hard pressed. For Jack at home is a lazy, indolent fellow. I pass him every evening lolling under the thick-set hedge; I notice him in the morning stretched out among the poppies at the cliff’s edge, watching the horizon, eternally looking out to sea, smoking innumerable pipes, and doing simply nothing in a magnificent manner. He is civil enough, is the Norfolk sailor. He has always some pleasant salutation on his lips, he never fails to bid you good-morning or good-night though you pass him a dozen times a day; but when Jack is ashore he doesn’t mean to work. The father of some sixty summers may bend his back in the fields from sunrise to sunset, the old mother may go out cleaning to the nearest farmer’s, the wife may go down cliff and bring up pails of sea-water for the young lady visitors at the farm; but the muscular young sailor only intends to be ornamental, not useful, when he is at home. His occupation is to stroll up to the look-out by the ruined tower to watch the sea. How often when he is toiling on the deep must he have watched the land, and on a fine night seen the lights in the cottage windows where the lonely women are praying for the men at sea! It would be pleasant enough to waste hour after hour in the farmhouse garden, to enjoy that first morning pipe under the old mill with some favourite book—we never get newspapers here until they are a day or so old—to trudge among the cornfields with the favourite little terrier to one’s heels, who is death to field mice and a terror to moles; but there is the sea that can be reached by crossing only one cornfield, and there is no bathing round the coast of England to be compared to the stretch of deserted virgin sand untraversed by any human foot between the busy watering-places of Cromer and Mundesley. But the sea below and the springs above, the beating of the waves and the land water that pours down in torrents when it rains, are creating havoc with the Norfolk cliffs. Composed mainly of soft blue clay, they yield at the pressure of every storm, and are lessened by every tempest. Year follows year and acre after acre slips into the sea. The pathway we trod last year lies sheer down below, a ruin of grass and wildflowers. The steps cut down the cliff for the children yesterday form to-day an impenetrable morass of crumbling clay. So serious has been the cliff fall eastward and westward from Cromer, that the frightened villagers of our little hamlet have moved their tiny church a quarter of a mile landward! and have left their old tower and their buried dead enclosed in a churchyard doomed for destruction, but making in its loneliness and melancholy one of the most pathetic and picturesque corners of this neglected land. For here there is always poetry and always peace. The sea-birds whirl about the old church tower, the reapers reap, the sun falls, and nature is as silent as the grave. From here at night, when the sun has set over Cromer, the bright gleam of the white lighthouse, with its brilliant lamps, contrasts with the primrose tint of the distant sky, and makes nature a poem. Here, sitting on the old church wall later on, we see the bats flitter from the isolated tower, and hear the last song of the reapers as they carry the last load home. “Where are the bathing-machines?” some one will ask, as he descends with difficulty the narrow path that the fishermen have cut in the crumbling cliff. Where, indeed! And what need of them? Between Cromer and Mundesley there may be an odd dozen or so tents pitched here and there to accommodate the residents at the farmhouses; but this, to all intents and purposes, is a deserted shore. The caves in the cliffs provide ample dressing-rooms, and in the early morning, or at midday for the matter of that, there is not a soul visible on cliff or sand. The island of Sark is not more desolate. So the bather, unrestricted by rules and regulations, can take his dip when and where he pleases, and enjoy the luxury of an air-bath as well as a sea plunge. “A nice day for your washing,” observed an old farm labourer whom I found tilling the soil at the cliff’s edge this morning when I mounted from the beach. Out of breath with the climb I was glad of a rest, and he not altogether indifferent for a chat and the price of a pint of ale when work was done. So we fell to chatting about the harvest prospects. He was veritably the oldest inhabitant. He had lived in the seaside village for sixty odd years, and was now toiling hard to support a wife, a married daughter, an unfortunate son-in-law, and who shall say how many grandchildren that raced to greet the old man when he came from the parish church last Sunday afternoon? Dear me, what did he not remember? He remembered when the farmhouse was a splendid old hall,—it had once been a monastery, with images of saints in the niches of the walls; he remembered the destruction of two windmills at least by fire, and “a fine fire they made, to be sure”; he remembered when there were eight or ten acres more cultivated land at the cliff’s edge than there are now, and when such a thing as a railway from Norwich was not dreamed of. The old man was indifferently interested in politics, and did not appear to care a brass farthing whether he had a vote or not. He thought Liberals were as good as Conservatives, and _vice versa_. He had no complaint to make about any of them; but he wondered what the people who lived in towns would do for their bread if he didn’t work all day in the fields, and seemed to imagine, as most toilers do, that he was the most wearily worked man in creation. My old friend was, albeit, a cheerful and garrulous old fellow. He envied his little grandchildren the gift of being able to read and write, for he was born in days when education was little thought of; but so long as, by trimming the hedges, working in the fields, taking a job whenever he could get it, and walking miles and miles to get work when it was slack, he could make up twelve or thirteen shillings a week to comfort the large family dependent on him, he was not inclined to grumble. When I told him that he was to be envied for living in a healthy cottage by the sea, with its little flower garden about it, that he ought to be thankful for fresh air and the health-giving breezes of the coast, instead of being cramped up in a miserable garret in overcrowded London, he simply shook his head. What should he know of towns, or the misery of great cities? In sixty years he had only once seen Norwich, an hour’s journey by rail. As for London, I might just as well have spoken of Melbourne for aught he knew or cared about it. But far beyond politics, the imminent elections or the overcrowding of great cities, he was chiefly concerned with the vital question of harvest wages. The harvest wage, which is paid in a lump sum, is looked forward to by the Norfolk labourer as a means of paying the yearly rent of the cottage—say three pounds a year—and putting by something for a rainy day. Last year the farmers had paid seven pounds harvest-money in this district; but just now a terrible rumour had been spread about from cottage to cottage that six pounds per man was to be the maximum wage given. The harvest labourers are hired with an earnest token of a shilling, as in the case of recruiting; and, as a rule, the farmers in the neighbourhood consult together and settle what amount of wages they can fairly afford. My old friend was terrified lest some misguided labourer should have in an unguarded moment taken the fatal six pounds and so compelled the rest to follow suit. “He may have been talked over with promises of beef in a barn and beer from the barrel when harvest is over,” pleaded the ruddy-faced sexagenarian. They are very well in themselves, but won’t pay the rent or keep the children, as he very wisely observed. However, I was pleased to hear afterwards that the rumour was ill-founded, and that when the harvest comes seven pounds a man will be paid down cheerfully by the farmers, as in the good old times, so there will be no grumbling or discontent. The sun still shines by fits and starts, the breezes are boisterous; but though oats are cut down in some of the fields, the barley and wheat will want a good deal of scorching yet before they are ready for the sickle and the reaping machine. The harvest, which lasts a good month in most of the farms, is anxiously expected everywhere. No one can settle down until harvest is over. Directly the word is given for the men to go into the field a wave of excitement passes over the country. The children, much to their delight, are dismissed from school for a good five or six weeks, and the grave schoolmaster, at the head of the lads chases the rabbits as they are turned out of the falling wheat and barley. Laughter and song are heard all over the land, louder than the wind that bends the ripening crops or the sea that moans at the foot of the crumbling cliffs. Then is the time for “largesse.” It is the etiquette of harvest time in the Norfolk lands to demand “largesse” from every passing stranger. “Please da us largesse,” say the urchins, boys and girls; whilst the foreman of the gang of labourers will leave the sickle or the horse and ask the stranger alms for the toilers on the field. There is a good time coming, no doubt, but men and lads alike will have to wait a little longer. Meanwhile the country round about is in its full glory of summer loveliness. The crops are changing from deep green to golden yellow, and the scarlet poppies are not yet faded or dead among the corn. The root crops, lately so parched, are refreshed by the recent rains; and the ferns on the hills, where the rabbits hide, stand out rich and green against a skyline of Eton blue. No moon has yet shone out at night over the churchyard by the sea, or made the farmhouse garden decorated with the pale evening primrose and its stars of midnight bloom as bright as day. But after sunset comes that strange white light of summer-time, and the evening breezes bring a scent of ripening corn to the late lingerer over the white farmhouse gate. XXII. FROM LAKE TO MOUNTAIN. Sitting, one bright summer morning after breakfast, on the lake balcony of the Restaurant du Nord at Geneva, smoking a cigar, watching the steamers starting on their various excursions, the fishermen busy on every bridge and quay, the swallows gathering before their departure for the year, and flying low across the blue waters, I wondered how it was that this quiet, sunny city reminded me so strongly of two of the most beautiful spots in the world—Venice and Naples. It was not strange that it should be so. I saw from where I sat far more water than land. I seemed to be surrounded by lake. There were few trees to speak of, bridges, quays, islands, great hotels, pretty shops, a careless, happy, contented people, and, best of all, music. There is a restaurant I well remember at Naples, on the main road to Pausilippo—a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the bay, where, in the cool of the summer evening, when the sun is setting, you can see Vesuvius in action across the quiet waters, and the fishermen spearing the fish down below, and where, when the quiet time for coffee has come, you are treated to an interlude of pleasant music. The fishermen may be singing in their boats on the bay; but, as you dine, the minstrels attached to the restaurant come round and chant the airs of the country to those who are disposed to listen. At Venice any traveller can enjoy plenty of music with his dinner or breakfast. There are innumerable minstrels to sing to you, and water enough everywhere to carry the sound and emphasize the silence. The comparison between these favoured spots and simple Geneva will not be found so extravagant when we remember how the sunny city is situated, what bridges and quays and islands it possesses, how little din of traffic interferes with its pleasant peace, and how the hotels on every side are washed with water of a deep and matchless blue. But it is the music that gives the chief charm to outdoor life at Geneva. In this little Paris on the lake we find music almost the whole day long. At every restaurant and café of importance a little band of instrumentalists or singers is engaged, and here they sing or play almost from morning until night. I can conceive no quieter moment away from London than a fine summer night at Geneva, when the stars are out and the moon is up, when the lake sparkles with innumerable lights and the cafés are busy, and as the people dine or chat, from each open café comes the sound of pleasant music that the peasants enjoy gratis outside, and that is rewarded by the small offerings of the guests within. And it is music of no indifferent kind. Vulgarity and commonplace are never encouraged; but as the night wears on, for the expenditure of a few sous the simple lounger may refresh his memory with the works of the best composers for the band or for the voice. Geneva may not have the same popularity as modern Lucerne, but as things go nowadays life there is infinitely more comfortable. At one of its best hotels—the Hotel National—you have a garden of flowering shrubs and oleanders, after the fashion of Vevay and Lausanne. There is lawn-tennis among the flowers on the garden terrace, and just that happy mixture of indolence and pleasure that is so much enjoyed by the sensible holiday traveller. At an hotel at Geneva you are not forced to be merry or compelled to be dull. There is excitement for such as want it, and peace for all who require it. The hotels are not wholly given up to the frivolous or to the bores; and this is the reason perhaps that so many people nowadays come to Geneva for a day, and somehow find that they are irresistibly compelled to remain a week. The place with its simple life is so pleasant that the inevitable lake journey is postponed. Clouds are seen gathering over Mont Blanc, and the excursion to Chamounix can be postponed. The day slips quietly away without any energy or effort; and it would be strange indeed if happy hours could not be spent in a Geneva lake-side hotel, with its charming restful society, or at night at the Kursaal, with its concerts, its dances, its “little horses” supplemented by the café concert over the way, where singers, male and female, without effort, noise or vulgarity, delight their patrons until the small hours of the morning, and without necessitating the to-morrow’s headache of the continental music-hall. When the watch shops and the musical-box manufacturers and the famous Greek Church, with its jewelled pictures, and the ordinary sights of Geneva, had been done and committed to memory, I found myself one evening, after dinner, listening to Thérésa at the Kursaal. In another moment I was in the company of old friends, who had strayed from Aix-les-Bains to Geneva; and it did not take long to persuade them that the best way to forget the dissipation of this fascinating watering-place, to allow the “cure” to do ultimate good instead of harm, to drive from the ears the fatal haunting “Combien la banque?” to forget all about baccarat and money lost or won, as the case might be, was to get up a party of good fellows and to drive straight away to Chamounix, up on the mountains, in the snow and fresh air. There they could exchange the heated air of the gambling-room and the frivolity of fashion for a quiet Alpine village, with primitive streets full of guides and porters, for a score of glaciers and waterfalls, for excursions to the Mer de Glace at one end of the valley and the exquisitely transparent Glacier des Bossons at the other, for air that invigorates and early hours that are healthful, and for what is perhaps best of all for the system and temper—a day or so’s outing with cheerful companions, who never ceased laughing from the moment the carriage drove out of Geneva at daybreak one day till it returned some days after with its little party, destined to part, but ever to remember that delightful drive from lake to mountain and back again to home and duty. Maybe that Mr. Spriggins had most of the talk to himself; maybe that he awoke the echoes of the Haute Savoie with laughter following his incomparable anecdotes; maybe he chaffed guides, coachmen and travellers with a freedom unknown in these parts; maybe this genial gentleman had a crowd of urchins round him in the streets of Chamounix, a select congregation on the hotel terrace after dinner, and an excited audience of tourists when he headed a triumphal procession up to the Glacier des Bossons; still, there were few who objected to his resistless flow of spirits—from the coachman, who could scarcely drive seriously, owing to the chatter and chaff of the “petit homme drôle” inside, down to the hotel waiters, who stood aghast at the French of one who has boldly placarded the success of “Ici on Parle Français.” The drive from Geneva to Chamounix is pleasant enough in the companionship of folks in the ordinary diligence; but it must be memorable when the weather is fine, when time is of little consequence, when the posting is on Pickwickian principles, when the roadside meals each have their special significance, and Chamounix is eventually reached with sides sore with laughing and brains exhilarated with pure mountain air. It is an enchanting journey under any circumstances. The gradual ascent is through a delightful pastoral country, amidst acres and avenues of apples and plums and greengages that fringe the roadside, to the chasms and the gorges and the waterfalls and the roaring torrents that lead to the snowfields, with their majestic splendour and the silence of their mysterious awe. The sudden rains of August had worked havoc with the diligence road. Great boulders of granite and grey rubble had come crashing down through the trees; the road for some yards had been washed clean away, and at Sallenches an unbridged river presented a formidable obstacle to every conveyance on the road; but luckily at this exact spot of accident there was a short cut over the hills, so the travellers were able to get on to Chamounix without very much difficulty after all. The ascent from civilisation to snow is very striking. In the morning on the mud, at night on the mountain; at midday in almost tropical heat, at nightfall glad of a top coat in the arena of snow and ice; starting in the warm thunder-showers of August in a warm lake city, finishing over a cosy log fire in the smoking-room of an Alpine inn. On ordinary occasions Chamounix wears a stern and business-like air. All who are there intend to do something, as the guides and porters and mule drivers and boys know perfectly well who hang about the village street. Into each of their pockets will fall eventually some of the travellers’ francs. The excursions are arranged with extraordinary rapidity by the hotel proprietors and their assistants. In an instant can be settled an ascent to Mont Blanc or the Col du Géant, a climb to the Brévent, or a day’s stroll to one or other of the glaciers in the neighbourhood. All day long people are going and coming. At five o’clock in the morning the hotel is up and stirring, pedestrians in one direction, cavalcades of mules in another; the hall is studded with alpenstocks and ice-axes; in and out of the village come diligences, post carriages, pilgrim trains from morning till night; and it is only when the moon is rising and the glacier stream is roaring under the hotel windows, and the evening meal is over, and the shawls and wraps are huddled on, that the kindly chaplain is able to get an audience about him on the terrace and tell us of ascents and adventures and Chamounix anecdotes from the days of Albert Smith until now. The room which this famous entertainer occupied, at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, is faithfully preserved until this day. His portrait hangs upon the wall, between the two little camp beds that face the “Monarch of Mountains”; an entablature declaring the prowess of the hero of the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, is marked upon the door-post; but, to the disgust of many an Englishman who has been permitted to sleep in Albert Smith’s room, his name is recorded in letters of black and white as “Albert Schmidt.” The chaplain told us that many a traveller from England had approached him with tears in his eyes and implored him to head a deputation to M. J. Crepaux, of the Hôtel d’Angleterre, asking him that the Piccadilly and eminently cockney hero of Mont Blanc might not be confounded with any obscure German mountaineer. The honour of Albert Smith’s adventure, observed this indignant Britisher, belongs to England alone; and he held it to be an outrage that the successor of Jacques Belmat, De Saussure, and the other heroes of 1786, should be confounded with a Schmidt of any kind whatever. We lighted on Chamounix at a very interesting moment, and one that will doubtless revive the “Schmidt” controversy with increased acrimony, and eventually compel the courteous and energetic M. Crepaux to obliterate the obnoxious “Schmidt,” and to adorn the bed-chamber of our old friend of Percy Street with his name properly spelt and advantageously advertised. On Sunday, August 28th, in presence of guides, peasants, tourists and scores of American visitors to Chamounix, there will be unveiled a striking statue of Jacques Belmat, the first who ever ascended a mountain that has since been climbed by many adventurous women, and has this year been the scene of an unheard-of feat. It was thought very wonderful when, in the year 1859, Professor Tyndall spent twenty hours for observation at the top of Mont Blanc; but this year an enterprising French _savant_ has been able, by means of careful relays of guides and porters, to remain up there three times as long a time, and has come down safe and unfrozen to tell the tale. The statue, presented by the principal Alpine clubs of Europe to the village of Chamounix, is an interesting and well-composed bronze group, showing the first hero of Mont Blanc, and such important details as knapsack and alpenstock have not been forgotten. The energy that Belmat displayed in 1786 has been followed up by his descendants, for there are no more adventurous mountaineers in Switzerland than those who hail from the villages that are overlooked by this famous and beautiful mountain. The advantages of Chamounix over several popular and well-known Alpine centres is the superiority of its hotel accommodation and the frequency of its pleasant excursions. Without undergoing the fatigue or expense of an ascent of Mont Blanc, or any of the snow peaks usually reached from Chamounix, a day should never pass in fine weather when the excursionist need find the time hang heavily on his hands. To ask the ordinary tourist to be still, to bid him to rest and be thankful, to implore him to sit for a long delightful day on the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre, in pleasant society, drinking in the delicious air that fills the lungs with draughts of pleasure, lightens the brain, and exhilarates the spirits, is simply to waste breath and words at the same time. The tourist must tour. He refuses to keep still. He considers that he has not earned his breakfast unless he has awakened the hotel at cockcrow, or his dinner unless he arrives at the hotel door, dusty, travel-stained and dog-tired. And yet to some constitutions there is as much good gained in this pure air-bath, or in simply sitting still and looking at Mont Blanc, or dawdling to the Glacier des Bossons, or sauntering to the cascade over the Protestant church—the thank-offering of Albert Smith to Chamounix—as in half of the water-cures and baths of fashionable Europe. Those who “work and feel they work” had far better come to the hotel terrace of Chamounix, where the air is so pure and the evenings are so dull, than waste their time and their energy on sparkling lake or sun-struck valley. If it be pleasant gradually to ascend to Chamounix from the Geneva plain, feeling the air brighter and lighter as we go—to leave the fruit trees and cultivated plots of the lower villages for the dark and sombre pines of the majestic mountains, to have the senses filled with wonder and amazement at the sea-blue glaciers gradually slipping to the valley, and the snow-clad summits defying the majestic terror of the summer sun, how much more regretful must it be to leave Chamounix as we did one glorious summer morning, no cloud in the heavens, the sky a canopy of perfect blue, and every snow mountain standing out clear and triumphant in this superb panorama! Every point and speck in this mighty mountain range was visible to the naked eye. It was not strange if there came a passing thought, when contrasting all this purity and grandeur with much prettiness and pleasure—the peace of the mountain with the fever of the plain—the simplicity of Chamounix with the concerts and _petits chevaux_ and the dances and delights of lake-side existence—that possibly during our holidays we visit the mountains too little and love the plains too well. XXIII. FLORA’S FÊTE IN COVENT GARDEN. What more beautiful offering could have been made to the honour and eternal delight of the first day of summer than the sacrifice of blossom that was offered up last night in the Wholesale Flower Market at Covent Garden? The loveliest of days was followed by the calmest of nights; a cloudless morning ended in an evening of flowers. The boasted glories of the old Botanic Gardens in Regent’s Park, the floral pride of South Kensington, the old traditions of Chiswick, the modern magnificence of Sydenham,—one and all must bow their heads before the assertive pride and pomp of bloom that greeted the humble visitors who thronged the arcades of the modern market house, where they held the annual floral fête and promenade in aid of the Gardeners’ Orphan Fund. Foreigners had come from a distance, men accustomed to the glory of colour in the Dutch fields of hyacinth and tulip; growers had congregated here from market gardens, accustomed to magnificence of arrangement, endlessness of variety, and power of scent; owners of gay gardens and expensive greenhouses, amateurs of botany and cultivators of rare orchids put in an appearance; but one and all confessed that probably such a sight of flowers had never before met the delighted and astonished eye. It was not that the flowers were so rare or strange as that they were so superb and faultless of their kind. The growers of Covent Garden were determined to show what nature could do. No simple, modest marguerite daisies, but great stars of feathery white and gold, that stood out clear, dominant and assertive, in the subdued light, against the purples and rose colours and deep olive greens; no tiny calceolarias fit for a fairy, but great slippers of orange and gold into which a Juno might have stepped; no slim shreds of mignonette, but huge handsful of rich reseda that made the night air faint with scent; no diminutive bells of lily, but monster blooms, whether from the valley or from those holier gardens where the saints and virgins must wander in our imagination. Wherever one turned a new glory awaited the astonished gaze; and hedges of amber-coloured azalea; triumphs of heliotrope; rare orchids, spotted and starred with gold; geraniums from the proudest scarlet to the daintiest pink; feathery blooms of the graceful spiræa; beds and boxes of delicious roses, into which the children plunged their pale faces with delight; banks of fern of every imaginable shade and texture—not simply ranged breast high as at a flower-show, but bank on bank, tier on tier, pyramid on pyramid, until the gay dresses of the visitors, the uniforms of the Royal Horse Guards, every speck of artificial colour in the place, even the garish electric light, happily subdued, paled their ineffectual fires before a mass of colour which in its combined magnificence and purity it would be difficult to excel, and hard, indeed, to match. And how came the show about? Well, in honour of the Queen’s Jubilee, in 1887, the Covent Garden growers started a “Gardeners’ Orphan Fund,” for the widows and children of those in distress connected with this beautiful industry. Every night almost the whole year round there is a show of flowers in this very market-place of surpassing interest; but once in the year, just in the month of flowers, it was determined that each grower should give of his best, in order to aid the Fund in a practical manner. Several influential people in society have taken a warm interest in the Fund—notably the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Sir Julian and Lady Goldsmid, the Duchess of Bedford, the Marchioness of Salisbury, the Countess Spencer, and Lady Dorothy Nevill. The flower fêtes have been increasing in popularity and loveliness every year, but last night was the triumph of the series. In order to give tone and effect to the occasion, a slight ceremonial was held to be necessary; and the members of the committee of the Fund assembled at an early hour in the evening to greet Sir Julian Goldsmid, Bart., M.P., the President of the Fund, who arrived punctually at eight o’clock, with Lady Goldsmid and her daughter, and to welcome later on the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who had promised to open the fête, and to attend with her husband and friends. The ceremonial was short, but impressive. A popular official commenced the proceedings by reading an address to the Baroness, extolling her good deeds, and wishing her, amidst enthusiastic cheers, long life and happiness—a pleasant task, that was only interrupted by the military band, which makes it a rule on these occasions to start up the most deafening galop the very instant any one attempts to address a public meeting. After a tremendous effort, the band, which once wound up refused, in spite of shouts and entreaties, to stop, was arrested in its mad progress; whereupon the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, in a gentle and impressive voice, spoke charmingly of flowers and the joy they were to men and women, taking inspiration from the gorgeous blooms around her; and after a few pleasant and appropriate remarks thanked the committee, wished well to the Orphan Fund, and declared the show open. A lovely bouquet of orchids having been presented to the Baroness and to Lady Goldsmid by the growers, a procession was formed to inspect the flowers; the temporary barriers were cleared away; the eager band was let loose again, under the directorship of Mr. Charles Godfrey; and all present gave themselves up to the genuine delight of contemplating and commenting on the flower garden until the early hours of the morning, when the business of the market gave way to pleasure. If a _plébiscite_ of the guests had been taken, the prize for novelty might have been awarded to a grand show of coleus from Edmonton, when a huge bank of orange-and-gold foliage plants was contrasted with a deep frieze and deeper dado of the metallic white _Lilium longiflorum_, the tall flowery lily that is held in the hands of female saints in the pictures of Botticelli; but the prize for beauty was the rare collection of typical English flowers—roses, lilies, mignonette, geraniums, ferns—arranged in pleasant disorder but in matchless taste. Then we had all the midsummer pomps that Matthew Arnold has described so beautifully in “Thyrsis”—“Roses that down the alleys bloom afar,” gold-dusted snapdragon, stocks and sweetwilliams, with their homely cottage smell, much of the bloom that covers “jasmine-muffled lattices,” and all that the enthusiast could have wanted to set it off would have been “the full-moon and the white evening star.” The extent of this pretty flower-show may be guessed when it is stated that the plants occupied an area of nearly three-quarters of an acre, and a frontage of flowers, tier above tier, extending over a length of seven hundred yards, with a thousand square yards of promenade for visitors between the scented avenues. One word more. To-day will be the day of all days to buy flowers in Covent Garden, and in buying to benefit the orphan children of the dead growers. There is always a use for flowers. The poor are always with us. If not to decorate the home and the boudoir, is there not an altar in some humble district church that may be made bright and beautiful with an almsdeed of blossom this month of May?—is there not some abiding memory with us that will suggest a silent journey with a gift of flowers to be scattered with sad tears upon some lonely and half-forgotten grave? XXIV. AN ALPINE PASS. Alas! it is time to leave my “Happy Valley” in Italian Switzerland, its vines and verdure, and to get back over the Alps to join my friends. To tell the truth, I was tired of the railway, that convenient destroyer of romance. In the railway I had skirted the loveliest end of the lake of Lucerne; in the railway I had passed over the mighty chasms and roaring waterfalls of the St. Gotthard Pass; in the railway I had slipped down into sunny Italy, past Bellinzona, and round about the Lago Maggiore, in and out of its vine-clad tunnels, and past its innumerable villas basking in the sempiternally blue waters. I longed for the jingle of diligence bells; for the crack of the postillion’s whip; for the comfortable chat with the conductor; for the halts at the little inns at the wayside; for the walks by short cuts through the Alpine flowers; for all the delights of quiet, observant travel that the smoky railway has nearly destroyed for ever. One Alpine pass at any rate is free from the iron horse, and is unsmoked by the grimy engine. No contractors, no levellers or gunpowder blasters have ventured as yet to conquer the Simplon. So I determined to drive over the Simplon Pass to Brigue, in Switzerland. I found myself one sultry evening in August at the picturesque little town of Intra, on the Lago Maggiore. The place was almost asleep, save for a penny circus that had pitched its tent under the lake-side trees. All the inhabitants of Intra were taking the air on the quay, for the sun had just set, and I was not long in repairing to the diligence office. By the day-diligence all the comfortable outside seats had been booked for a week. Would I take an inside? What! with innumerable babies and market women and fat farmers, picked up at various stations on a sultry day in August?—not if I knew it! I looked in despair, for I had made up my mind to sleep at Intra and cross the Alps the following morning. “Why not go to-night?” said the official. “When it is dark you will be driving over the dusty plains; at daybreak you will be at Domo d’Ossola.” “How many passengers are travelling to-night?” I asked. “Not a single one.” Without a moment’s hesitation I secured a seat in the banquette, had my dinner, and went to the circus. Intra goes to bed at ten o’clock, and we were not to start until nearly midnight. It is dull work in a sleepy Italian town alone when the lights are out; so I fished out the conductor and driver of the diligence, took them to a dimly-lighted cabaret, gave them as much red wine as they cared to drink and unlimited black cigars, and thus the minutes sped slowly but convivially until the hour for bringing out the horses with their jingling bells. It was a good move, this symposium with the conductor. He was to be my companion in the banquette until three o’clock the next afternoon, and he was a very decent fellow. “Look here, sir,” he said; “we shall not take up passengers until Domo d’Ossola. It is bitter cold at night, even in Italy, and terribly dusty over the plains. I advise you to get into the coupé, wrap yourself up, and get a sleep.” Wise counsel, surely! I thanked my stars that I had not forgotten a Scotch shawl when I started, though it was August; the whip cracked, the driver “yoo-yooped,” the bells jangled, the dogs barked, and out we sped from Intra, rattling over the stones. Gradually the lights disappeared, the noise lessened, I felt we were on a long level road, and I slept the sleep of the innocent until, just as the day was breaking, we drew up at the coach-office at Domo d’Ossola. It reminded me of the Lyceum pictures of Verona in _Romeo and Juliet_. I was parched with thirst, for the dust had got down my throat; so, as they were packing the luggage and changing the horses, I went for a melancholy ramble in search of a drinking fountain in a side street. I expected every instant to be arrested by a mediæval watchman or torn by a hungry dog; but I found the fountain, and quenched my thirst. I was turned out of the coupé, mounted to my seat in the banquette, and on we sped, higher and higher, to the regions of perpetual snow. You have no idea what a curious effect there is in the gradual dawning of the day in these pure regions. You can almost _hear it_. The mists unfold over the fields like a curtain of gauze. Distant objects become distinct. In the half-green light of the morning, how savage and awful look these black chasms, how fierce the rushing waters, how threatening the ravines, as the diligence passes over bridges and mountain torrents, and round awful crags and precipices of rock! On we went, sleepily jingling, the conductor dozing by my side; my imagination at high pressure. The noise of the advancing day became perceptibly louder. Nature was awakening very steadily, but I was not prepared for a glorious surprise. Down where we were there was no sun and little light: but, suddenly rounding a corner, we drove into a narrow gorge of rock, and at the extreme end of it was a tall snow mountain, its summit tinged with the most delicious pink glow I have ever seen. The contrast between the savagery of this gloomy scenery and the purity of the rose-clad mountain—the deep darkness and the exquisite light—was as beautiful a picture as can be well conceived. Gradually the glorious light seemed to descend from the mountain to the valley, as if it were a bright gift from heaven. The day began up there in the skies, in the vaulted blue. It kissed its welcome to the pure mountain first, and then it came down to console the plain. But in ascending an Alpine pass, you gradually leave nature and civilisation behind. Villages and cottages disappear, orchards and trees are rare, and we creep slowly on through crags and spars and grey-black rubble, detached by the water or the frost, and threatening to break the mountain road away. There has been a halt for a cup of coffee in the last pretty village smiling in the morning sun; but a few miles farther we are at an altitude beloved by the edelweiss, and snow-patches are on either side of the road. The scenery becomes more and more savage. Melancholy stations, where the wayfarer takes shelter in winter and from the storms, are the only signs of human habitation; and, as we crawl slowly on, it seems as if we shall never reach the top. I get out and walk in advance of the diligence through these cold and murderous ravines, through the clefts of the mountains, that seem to have no mercy in them. How small and powerless we seem, what pigmies, what atoms, in the face of such cruel majesty! One crash, one slip, one shake, and the little toy diligence, with all its contents, would be swept headlong into the hissing, screaming torrent. And men can stand erect in such scenes as these and disbelieve in God! But another change was in store for us. Unlike other Alpine passes with which I am familiar, there is a perfect oasis of beauty, a plateau of greenery, a gorgeous expanse of flower-land, almost at the top of the Simplon. We stopped for breakfast at the village that gives its name to the pass, and found a delightful inn and enchanting scenery, in air so pure that each breath of it was a stimulant and an exhilaration. I wonder that more people do not come up to stay at the Simplon village, to wander among its green fields and orchards, to gather the Alpine roses and scores of wildflowers, with glaciers and snow-mountains within a morning’s journey. I was positively sorry when we were ordered to mount again, and to leave this sweet and seductive spot. But we had to mount higher still. The sun was well out, the cattle-bells were heard all over the mountains, the scene was enchantingly lovely, when we drove up to the hospice or monastery that crowns the pass. A great St. Bernard dog was basking at the top of the stone steps; a friar was ready waiting to be taken down to the plains, to the regret of the peasants, who were bidding him farewell; and, whilst the conductor was taking in the letters to a lay brother, I was able to go into the lovely little chapel, where, at that early hour, the brothers were singing their office for the day. And, after all, is it so very unhappy a life to be up here among the mountains, breathing the fresh air in the centre of this enchanting scenery, away from the feverish, unforgiving world, doing good, praying without ceasing, and waiting for the end? Well, the conductor calls me out of the chapel, the monks wave us a farewell, the St. Bernard licks my hand, and says “Good-bye” as courteously as a noble dog can; and whether “the monk he leads a happy life” or not, I for one must get down to the valley and the world. Once more a change. Down we drive at a tremendous pace: under galleries of rock, to protect the diligence from the mountain torrents, winding round and round the road to the forest range. Down we come, from monks and monasteries to curates and civilisation. Down, down, lower down, to _pensions_ where English families are staying; down to boys in blazers and girls with alpenstocks; down to the region of rough cottages and beggars. It is a lovely descent. Over the way, miles distant, this clear and lovely morning, on the other side of the Brigue valley—the Canton des Valais—we can see the Aletsch Glacier and the Eggishorn, full of memories of old friends, and the Bel Alp, where we had such fun years ago; and with the naked eye I can detect Professor Tyndall’s Alpine home on the Lust’gen Alp among the clouds; and so down, down, through the dust, to the heat and the bustle, and the scrambling for food, and the sunburnt girls and the knickerbockered lads, and the ice-axes and the knapsacks, and the multitudinous languages at the Brigue railway station. The “peace of the valley has fled.” In a few moments the travelling community is fighting for seats. We toil on in the train, and the sun that I saw rise on a roseate mountain peak over Domo d’Ossola, I see set in golden glory over Byron’s island with the “three tall trees” on the lake of Geneva opposite the castle of Chillon. It has been a journey from lake to lake. Last night I was to have slept on the Lago Maggiore, to-night I shall rest on Lake Leman. XXV. SUMMER IN SWITZERLAND. What has sunny Switzerland done to deserve the neglect she has experienced at the hands of the English tourist this year? The old familiar spots, Lucerne and the Righi-land; the lake-washed hotels that the steamers pass every hour or so between Weggis and Brunnen; the summer palaces perched on the topmost heights at the Bürgenstock, at lovely Axenstein, at envied Engelberg, all echo to the voices of Americans, Italians, Germans and French; but, except in the Canton Valais, round about Brigue and the footpath to Zermatt and the Bel Alp, on that long dusty railway that begins at the foot of the Simplon Pass and ends at Geneva, I have honestly found but few of my travelling countrymen. And I have not been idle since August began, with its alternate fits of thunder, lightning, rainstorms and blue sky. I have arrived at an hotel in Brussels, and found it in possession of nearly a hundred personally conducted American tourists, who kept their accounts and diaries religiously all day in the courtyard, and played “Yankee Doodle” with enthusiasm on the piano at night. I have been in a wild thunderstorm in one of the splendid lake steamers that was crossing the lake of Lucerne, at a point where the mountains are highest and the gloom of the sudden darkness most impressive. I have listened at nightfall to the organ in the beautiful old church behind the Schweitzerhof, when the famous “vox humana” stop was piteously wailing amidst the crash of thunder and the rushing of rain that broke in torrents over the church with the two tall spires. I have gone up the new funicular railway to the capital restaurant at Gütsch, that overlooks the panorama of Lucerne, and after breakfast strolled through the dark pine forest to the hilltop at Sonnenberg, a perfect garden of meadow grass and wildflowers. I have revisited the Righi up by railway and down by the footpath to Weggis, up high amidst old familiar haunts, the sunny terrace at the Kaltbad, with its lazy loungers; the popular Fürst and Scheideck, with their dreamy residents; the Kulm, with its clouds and knick-knack sellers, with the people determined to see a sunset or sunrise in spite of mist and thundercloud. I have wandered all one burning summer afternoon among the cool woods and the groves and the sweet-smelling hay meadows of lordly Axenstein. I have been over the St. Gotthard and down on the other side in the lovely and far-too-long-neglected canton of Ticino, enjoying a lotos-eating existence in Italian Switzerland among the vines and lizards and pastoral quiet of the Blénio valley, that gives London its courteous waiters and Paris its handsome sellers of chestnuts at the street corners. I have basked on the Lago Maggiore, and taken diligence at Intra over that most magnificent pass the Simplon, seeing on one day the sunrise at Domo d’Ossola and a superb sunset over Byron’s three-treed island at Villeneuve on the lake of Geneva. Notwithstanding all these glimpses of lake and mountain; of torrent and storm; of modern Swiss hotel life, with its American bars and nightly excitement; of the ever prevalent Kursaal, with its two-franc chances at the “little horses,” and every inducement to gamble at the new odd-and-even bagatelle game downstairs, to baccarat on the first floor with open doors up to five o’clock in the morning, I have also heard a French opera capitally sung at the theatre at Lucerne, and Thérésa applauded in her new sentimental songs, “Vive la Chanson” and “Le Bon Gîte” at the public entertainment hall at beautiful but neglected Geneva; and I am still bound to confess that never before have I heard more American and less English, more foreign tongues and less Anglo-Saxon, than during the last summer holiday. The St. Gotthard Railway has done wonders for Lucerne, and this lovely spot has now established itself by common consent as the favoured headquarters of the tourist of every nation. Civility and cheap prices prevail at poor neglected Geneva, where the tourist is made more comfortable than at any other city in Switzerland, whereas Lucerne has adopted a stand-off, consequential air, a tone of lordly hauteur and indifference strangely at variance with its old habits and pleasant tradition. Time was when hotel life at Lucerne was a model of European system, of moderate expenditure and good living; but this rush of popularity has been too much for the lovely lake city, and the object of the new school of hotel proprietor is to crowd and empty his house as fast as he can every day, and to make hay whilst the sun shines, more with a view to his own pocket than to the perfect convenience of his guests. We must take things as we find them, and bow to the wishes of the greatest number; but few old-fashioned travellers can have failed to notice how our American travelling cousins have revolutionised hotel life in Switzerland and destroyed that calm that used to be enjoyed in the old days. It is assumed, doubtless on satisfactory evidence, that no Swiss hotel can be considered popular without a crowning scene of noise and excitement. It is not enough to tear over the lake and rush up mountains all day. The fatigue of such excursions is quite immaterial. Every night without intermission there must be some excitement,—not as it used to be occasionally at one or other of the hotels, but regularly at each. The instant dinner is swallowed, the hall, the drawing-rooms, the reading-rooms are handed bodily over to the young people, who have no care for digestion or post-prandial cigars and contemplation. One night there is a rush the instant the last pear is peeled to scramble for a chair to hear a Hungarian band wailing its wild melodies in the echoing hall and corridors; the next a quartette of Neapolitan singers is putting an end to all conversation by roaring at the top of their voices the last Italian comic song with banjo accompaniment; on a third, the old fogies who want to see the London papers are trampled over by excited young men and women, dancing valses in every possible variation of step and time, the men using their arms like pump-handles, and the girls advertising once more the folly of badly adjusted dress-improvers, which literally waggle with the waltz; on a fourth, the easy-going tourist, tired with his day, and not anxious to disturb the enjoyment of the young people, goes outside on the terrace, to meditate over a cigar, with black Pilatus glowing before him, crowned with stars, and to enjoy the summer stillness of the glittering lake—when hey, presto! his meditations and dreams are disturbed by a sudden outburst of cheap fireworks, that crackle, burst and fizz for a good half-hour, amidst the flowery oleanders and silent limes. There is no getting away from the nightly noise at modern Lucerne. One would have thought that the new Kursaal, where they gamble by authority, and dance and sing every evening, would have occasionally relieved the din of modern hotel life. But nowadays it is literally impossible to find a corner, from the Swan to the National, that is free from bands, singers or fireworks. When they are tired of letting off crackers and Roman candles under the trees on the lake terrace, they have another display on the water; when the serenaders in Masaniello costumes from Naples have sung their repertoire in the hall of the hotel, they repeat it in boats prior to retiring to the German beer gardens at the back of the town. Another strange feature of the fashionable Swiss hotel is the “American bar,” not hidden away in a corner, but placed in a most pretentious position where the guests most do congregate, and presided over by some handsome Swiss girl, sometimes in her cantonal costume, occasionally in modern dress. This damsel, who is a mistress of languages, studies the American’s taste for a cocktail, and the Englishman’s partiality for Scotch whisky; serves mysterious drinks to young ladies who, escaping from their chaperons, discuss “long” and “short” beverages through straws; and encourages the young athlete to sit up smoking until all hours of the morning instead of getting the night’s rest that should be the fitting conclusion of a tiring day. It is just certain that these nightly routs, these incessant fireworks, these bands and bars, these dances and drinks, would not be tolerated for a moment were they not considered imperatively necessary by the majority of the guests assembled in summer at Swiss hotels; but, at the same time that the excitement of the majority is duly attended to, is it altogether selfish to claim consideration for the comfort of the minority? If some of us sacrifice after dinner our cigar, our chat, our newspaper, or our book, still sleep, after all, is a consideration; and slumber is reduced to a minimum when the halls and corridors echo and re-echo with the songs of Hungary and Naples, the valses of Strauss, the latest giant in Swiss musical boxes, and when our next-door neighbours tumble up to bed in the small hours after frequent potations at the American bar. The conversation that was rudely checked after dinner cannot surely be appropriately resumed in bedrooms with thin partitions and innumerable keyholes. The wrangle of Madame with Monsieur at fitful intervals in the next room is one of the inevitable evils of foreign travel; but even that, coupled with fits of snoring, is preferable to the bacchanalian ditties of young men refreshed with wine, and with memories stimulated to the revival of curious anecdotes peculiar to the smoking-room. Without stating it as a fact, is it not at least possible that the sudden removal of English patronage from the hotels that were once more English than foreign is due in a great measure to these reforms in hotel procedure? Up at the Eggishorn and at the Bel Alp, in the Zermatt district, and at scholastic Mürren; away at Grindelwald on the Wengern Alp; at Chamounix and Pontresina, we find but a very limited supply of these “high jinks” of the valley and the lake, and at most of these places we find as healthy and as earnest as ever the athletes with their ice-axes, the amateurs with their knickerbockers and laced boots (always with the tags out in the case of Englishmen), the Girton girls with their hobnailed Balmorals and sunburnt faces, and all the determined searchers for health and fresh air who are drawn up the mountains from the valley. Mountain railways, either “funicular” or on the well-known Righi system, abound about Lucerne. Pilatus is soon to be a formidable rival to its fashionable opposite neighbour. Already the rails are laid almost to the top of this grim and lowering mountain, and by next summer we are promised excursions to the top for sunrises and sunsets, and all the advantages of Kulm hotels. The base of Pilatus is easily reached by steamer to Alpnacht, and thus one more attraction will be given to those who rest at Lucerne and take daily excursions across the lake. At present Pilatus is one of the few easy mountains that can be scaled by an average good walker, who can endure a stiff climb at the end of a fatiguing day; but boys and girls do not walk so much as they used to do, and Pilatus is to have its railway like the rest of the Swiss giants. On a far smaller scale, the Gütsch Rope Railway has opened up to visitors and residents a capital and convenient day’s excursion that can be easily taken by those of any age. Over the old bridge at the far end of the town, a “funicular” railway takes you on to the commanding terraces of a capital hotel that was once an old château. Here excellent breakfasts and dinners are served at a moderate cost, and you sit out and enjoy them at little tables on a terrace commanding a noble panorama of the old red-roofed town and blue lake. It is one of the coolest and most pleasant spots in all Lucerne, and yet it must be very little known, even to American tourists, for I found there on two occasions nothing but Italians and Germans. The view from the Star and Garter at Richmond, or from the hotel at St. Germains, cannot compare with the vista obtained at the Gütsch Hotel and Restaurant, overlooking Lucerne. At the immediate back of the hotel is a dense pine forest, as cool as a cathedral, where you can wander for hours in perfect peace and comfort. Here on Sunday the residents of Lucerne come up for an afternoon’s picnic; and some few miles up through the forest you come to the Sonnenberg Hotel, mounted up high in a delightful pastoral country, with a view of several lakes; and higher still above the hotel you come by an easy ascent to a mountain top covered with trees and with a carpet underneath of luxuriant grass. The wonder is that people should swelter in hot Lucerne when, for half a franc, they can come up to Sonnenberg, where they are shaded from the moment they get out of the railway. All through the month of August thunderstorms have been prevalent in Switzerland, and they have been of unusual grandeur on the lakes of Geneva and Lucerne. On the Righi early in the month several cattle were killed by lightning close by the Kulm Hotel; but no other serious accidents have been reported, though on many occasions the storms have continued with great violence throughout the day. One of the grandest and most sublime effects I ever saw during a thunderstorm was on the occasion of the first representation of the Passion Play acted in 1880 at Ober Ammergau. The storm kept gathering all through the dramatic scenes that preceded the Crucifixion on Calvary. The stage was in the open air, with a background of hill and mountain. The whole sky became a deep indigo blue; the birds flew terror-stricken before the impending storm, and the rumblings of thunder were heard among the distant hills. When the calm, white figure was raised to the cross the storm broke. An awful peal of thunder sent the terror-stricken peasants to their knees, and flash after flash of forked lightning lit up the scene with lurid effect as the crucified figure, white and pale, stood out against a background ink-black. A scene almost as strange occurred the other evening. Whilst the organ was playing in the Old Catholic church at Lucerne, the church became as black as night, for a storm was breaking over the city. The vivid lightning flashed into the windows and lighted up the high altar surmounted by a huge emblem of the Crucifixion. But clear above all this roar of thunder and turmoil of storm could be heard the piercing wail of the wonderful voice-stop of the organ, that sang out its piteous plaint as the storm gradually subsided and the darkened church and the altar figure became bright again with the sudden light of the setting sun. On the next night the organist introduced an imitation of a thunderstorm with wonderful effect. The representation of rain was so startlingly realistic that when the people came out of church they could not believe that not a drop of rain had fallen. XXVI. IN THE TAUNUS VALLEY. If pretty little Ems owes everything to nature, it is equally certain that Wiesbaden is an admirable example of the conquests of art. At Ems, situated as it is on the banks of the river Lahn, with a huge mountain covered with trees on either side of the stream, the architect had little else to do but place his villas coquettishly among the trees; the gardener could but lay out his gardens according to the designs that Nature had prepared; and the hotel proprietor satisfied his customers when he contrived that every bedroom window should overlook a mountain or green hill. But at Wiesbaden, on the other hand, the effect which has been obtained is due almost entirely to the artist. The great hotels and citizens’ white palaces; the groves and avenues of lime and plane trees; the parks, with their various and variegated shrubs and flowers; the artificial lakes dotted about with pleasure islands; the rural ideas seen everywhere in the heart of a town, show plainly what can be done in the way of shading off and making pleasant the grimness of our walled enclosures. It would be difficult to find a happier example of _rus in urbe_ than at Wiesbaden, the old capital of the Duchy of Nassau, one of the former gambling-houses on the Rhine, and still, in spite of all change, one of the most attractive and picturesque watering-places on the Continent. But surely there is no need to hurry over the journey between the Lahn and Taunus valleys. The Continental “Bradshaw” is accurate enough when it states it can be done in a few hours. So it can. The railway will hurry you along, giving here a peep of valley scenery, there a momentary glimpse of the Rhine, at another minute a bird’s-eye view of a German village. It will be better, perhaps, as the day is fine, to take train, just as a commencement, only as far as Lahnstein, in order to see if those dark clouds hanging about the hills mean mischief, and to consult the plan of the Rhine boats when we get down to the water’s edge. It is evident that the season at Ems is on the wane. The band awakens one, it is true, at six o’clock in the morning, and from each hotel go little parties to the mineral springs under the colonnade, and afterwards to enjoy the only breath of invigorating air which will come up the valley to-day, so oppressive and thick is the August weather. But the railway station at Ems is crowded with departing families and sorrow-stricken Gretchens, each bearing in her hand a huge bouquet of real flowers, in token that she has lost no time during her holiday, and has left behind her some disconsolate Max or desperate Heinrich. One bouquet, did I say? Why, there are German maidens at Ems station to-day so laden with flowers and floral parting gifts that they are forced to call papa, mamma, brothers and sisters to their assistance, in order to carry off the nosegays which have been showered upon them as they leave the stage on which they have triumphed. And so farewell to Ems! “Bin doch ein arm unwissend kind Begreife nicht was er an mir find’t, Du lieber Gott! was so ein Mann Nicht aller alles denken Kann!” whisper the Gretchens behind the bouquets of roses as Faust is thrust out of the station by a violent official. The train winds in and out the hills, following the course of the river, the white houses and villa gardens are left behind, and sentiment is destroyed by the bustle of Ober Lahnstein. A Rhine steamer will touch at the wooden pier of Lahnstein at one o’clock; the black clouds have rolled away no one knows or cares whither; the sky is blue, the sun is shining. The very best views occur between here and Bingen, so would it not be as well to get to Wiesbaden by the river? It will take longer, no doubt, but there will not be the slightest chance this way of losing one’s luggage; and it is surely affectation to avoid Rhine steamers for fear of rubbing shoulders with tourists. At any rate, this long hour is not lost in idling on the river bank and awaiting the arrival of the steamer. There are no tourists here. The train has gone away, and the Rhineside station is deserted save by a few porters, who never put aside their china pipes even when engaged in shunting the luggage vans. A dozen lads who disdain any caps or head covering, and whose hair is bleached positively white by the sun, are playing at soldiers between school-hours, or fishing in the yellow and fast-flowing river. Girls with wonderfully braided hair are carrying pails and cans to the well, which, from the days of Goethe, has been the debating ground for the women of the village; and all about one are signs of that pleasant idleness which appears to be so valued by the Rhinelanders. Presently a bell is heard down the river, the red-coated attendant of the wooden pier awakens from the doze he is enjoying on the grass bank, the two blue-bloused porters are alive to the fact that a chance portmanteau is suggestive of a few easily-earned gröschen, and the new American river steamer _Friede_ comes alongside. The embarkation is managed with a system and an absence of all officiousness highly to be commended. In two minutes all luggage is ticketed and arranged for its destination, and the conductor with the gold band round his blue cap intimates that the _table d’hôte_ dinner has just commenced. This is an institution not to be missed. The cooking is admirable. The wines, specially selected by the steamboat company, are very cheap, and dinner is the best introduction to travelling companions. But where are these objectionable tourists? This is the popular boat of the day, leaving Cologne in the morning and arriving at Mayence before dark. The majority of the passengers are German, there are an English family or so and a few Americans, but not one alpenstock or pair of canvas shoes on board. On goes the steamer _Friede_ with a saloon full of passengers dining at the open windows, and with decks well covered with inveterate smokers. So excellent are the arrangements, and so extensive the staff of servants, that all can be served and attended to, no matter what may be the habits and requirements of the passengers. Whilst the _table d’hôte_ is in full swing, whilst the corks of the Oberingelheimer and Liebfraumilch are popping, whilst chicken is being eaten with plum sauce, and roast meat with apple jam, whilst the English palate is becoming accustomed to raw herring and garlic, sausage and fish, after three courses of meat, there is no reason whatever why the old priest should not be served with bread and cheese and Bairische beer on the upper deck, or why the exclusive party of blue Lancers should not crack their jokes, stroke their fair beards, and enjoy Rhine wine and dessert at a small table by one of the funnels. But it is in the hot August afternoon, when dinner is over and the saloon deserted, that the Rhine journey is most enjoyable. There is no need to talk, no object in prancing restlessly about the deck, no energy to-day for poring into guide-books and learning by heart the thousand-and-one legends of the Rhine. The constant chatter of the passengers comes not unpleasantly in whispers upon the ear as, half in a doze, those to whom the Rhine is an old friend choose a warm corner, and enjoy the throb of the large steamboat beating desperately against the heavy stream. On the steamer _Friede_ it is the old story, and a pleasant one enough it is. No noise here to-day, no bands and shouting and comic songs, no wild dancing and gambolling on the deck as on a Margate boat, no vulgar catch-words or reminiscences of the music-hall. A newly married couple in a carefully selected retreat pretend to read, and are content to look at one another; a highly intelligent English girl (or she may be Scotch) divides her attention between an elaborate diary and a well-filled sketch-book; a young lad quite ripe for a public school is telling his sister, who is the very image of Maggie Tulliver, the story of Bishop Hatto, to which she listens with unconcealed astonishment, and is not content until her head has been well filled with Rhine legends; a good mother, who, though at least two hours from Bingen, commences counting and re-counting the piles of sticks, umbrellas, bags and waterproofs with which her young family has overwhelmed her; a paterfamilias is hard at work with a scrap of paper and a lead pencil, determined to master before nightfall the intricate mystery of silbergröschen and pfennige; a German student with a black bag secured across his shoulder by a green band—which is never laid aside—is enjoying a bottle of beer and a scientific treatise; here and there are some Oxford University men and public school boys, all in stout boots, prepared for an excursion up one of the Rhine valleys; the conductors of the steamboat smoke cigars, and with the utmost good-nature tell for the ten-thousandth time the story of every castle we pass and the statistics of every town and village; and the steersman at the round wheel between the funnels struggles with the rudder and makes for the quiet corners under the banks. Such as of yore are our companions on the Rhine steamer; and as to the Rhine itself, like old music and old friends, its delights are increased by time and past association. Sitting here, away from the sketch-books, the guide-books and the gröschen, up in a corner where one can feel both sun and breeze, and where the steamer gossip comes lulled and softened on the ear, it seems as if the old river whose praises were sung by Becker, and whose immortal song in turn was chanted by the impetuous Alfred de Musset, never looked so lovely as it does to-day. “They shall not have our German Rhine!” says the patriotic song of 1840; “We have had it, we’ve held it, your German Rhine,” answers the ardent poet of 1841. “Well worth both battle and song,” thinks the lazy traveller from his warm August corner on the Rhine steamer. Here is the old castle hanging over St. Goar, where we saw the Schützenfest years ago, and drank deep of the student’s “bowl”; and over yonder is the Swiss valley of St. Goarhausen, where the wild flowers grow and the botanist hunts for specimens; now we have come to the little village of Oberwesel, the cosy headquarters of many a walking party at the pretty inn—oddly called the Golden Corkscrew—in front of the river, and yonder are the hills on which they grow the grape which makes Johannisberg famous. It is strange if one day out of the journey cannot be devoted to this great river. It may be like views in Wales, or scenery in Scotland; the vines may spoil the picturesque effect—they may be too formal, too cultivated, or what not; we may be disappointed here or astonished there; it may not come up to our expectation, or it may exceed it: but all the same, with its hills, its castles, its vineyards, and its variety, with its constant succession of pictures, its village life and romantic associations, it is the Rhine, whose beauty cannot be disputed, and whose praises will be sung by all travellers until the end of time. As the sun sets it becomes bitterly cold on the river, the parties are broken up and dispersed, and few are found to remain faithful to their corner except the honeymoon couple and the blue Lancers, who are intent as ever on their glasses of Rhine wine. It was bright and blue when the steamer came in sight at Ober Lahnstein. It is grey and cold as it hurries away from Biebrich and deposits the Wiesbaden passengers at the opening of the Taunus valley, opposite the celebrated palace of the Dukes of Nassau. An old ramshackle omnibus tumbles over the Biebrich stones and crawls along the avenue into the gay streets of Wiesbaden. We may recall once more the picture of the town in the old days, in order to compare it with the present. No one who has ever seen it can have forgotten the bright appearance of this laughing place,—the smart carriages and their decorated horses, the clean white streets, the splendid hotels, the avenues of lime trees everywhere, and the parks and coffee gardens forcing themselves into notice. But Wiesbaden was not always seen by day even by her visitors, who sometimes arrived in desperate haste by night and left with promptitude next morning. From Ems they rushed to change their luck in these brilliant rooms, and off they hurried again to change their luck once more at Homburg or Baden-Baden. The view of Wiesbaden to such midnight visitors was dazzling and attractive enough. There was scarcely time to dine or dress, to wash the dust away or drink a tumbler of champagne. Before all things else was the Kursaal in the artificial park. How brilliant and enticing it looked in the old days, as the carriage drove along to the gambling table, a thousand lamps reflected on the lake in front of the Kursaal, a thousand lights at the jewel shops under the colonnade! Inside what a glare and an oppressive heat, what jewels and diamonds, what a babel of tongues and coaxings and chatter—not quiet, thoughtful, solemn play, as at Bad-Ems, but noisy, reckless, wilful staking of handsful of gold and notes! Outside what a fairyland, with its second lake all bright with coloured lights, its painted boats and limelight islands, its orchestra playing a captivating valse, its restaurant merry with the clatter of cups and glasses! What wonder that women fainted at the gaming-tables, and were carried out! What wonder that, unable to endure the fever of the place, many, who saw what it was like, left the dazzling Kursaal and the theatrical gardens, and passed on elsewhere! All is quiet now in the Taunus valley. The theatrical tarnish has been removed, and only the artificial beauty of the place remains. Strange, is it not, that in this very Kursaal, where thousands have been lost, and who knows what evil done? within two years of the closing of the tables, I see this evening the principal room devoted to two or three quiet rubbers, a game at cribbage between two old ladies, a hand or so at piquet and écarté, and actually two children playing chess in a corner! Nay, more: such is the complete change in the Wiesbaden atmosphere, that, sitting in the long reading-room, some minutes before ten o’clock in the evening, deeply interested in the latest news from home, I was disturbed by a Kursaal servant, who, rubbing his eyes, politely informed me I was the last one left in the building. So far as one can judge after a hurried visit, though the society at Wiesbaden and its manners and customs are entirely altered, there is no lack of interest in the place, and no signs of any disposition to give it the cold shoulder. All day long there is a healthy bustle and life in the Wilhelmstrasse, and the pretty walks and groves in the park are patronised by ladies’ schools and nursemaids. The shops in the Kursaal colonnade are all open, as of old, and are liberally patronised by the English visitors. There is a theatre here, with performances every night, and Herr Schultz draws great houses to see his tricks at mimicry and studies in physiognomy. What, then, it will be asked, will be the ultimate fate of places like Wiesbaden, now that they have been deprived of the support of those who lived and bought and threw their money here and there as recklessly as they staked? Will chance visitors and summer Rhine travellers, will invalids seeking aid from the waters, and admirers of a well-ordered and graceful spot, support these monster hotels, and make it worth while for exhibitors to come from all parts of the world and take stalls in the Colonnade? Will the varying custom of a season, added to the small subscription, pay the liveried servants and innumerable officials of Wiesbaden’s great public club—the Kursaal? The answer to all this will assuredly be in the affirmative, to judge from the appearance of Wiesbaden now, when its legitimate season is said to be over. It will become in course of time a Rhenish Cheltenham, with advantages which our English spa does not possess. Hither will come not only from Germany, but from all quarters of Europe, those who like a warm climate, who would live moderately and well, who are inclined to try the discipline of water-drinking, and who can find educational, artistic and musical aids for which Germany is so justly celebrated. We possess our little spas at home, and they are one and all popular, if occasionally a little dull. To avoid the danger of being tedious, Wiesbaden has at once hit upon a plan for encouraging a continually cheerful and animated society. The parks will be kept up, the gardens will be filled with the gayest flowers, amusements will be encouraged in theatre and Kursaal; and so long as the weather remains beautiful as now, crowds of people will be encouraged to promenade in the Kursaal gardens to hear good music—not trash—played by an excellent band. Wiesbaden, like a beauty who has washed out the _auricomus_ from her hair, left off paint and pearl-powder and made-up features, reappears in her native and untarnished complexion. I have seen her in her fever and in her convalescence. I saw her last when the fury of gambling was made more desperate by the knowledge that it was to end. I saw her when some of the worst characters in every European city poured into the Taunus valley to stake their last farthing, to fill the hotels, to give the streets and rooms a false animation, and to help to drive away those for whom the waters, the climate and the surroundings of Wiesbaden were of infinite advantage. I see her now with a regular pulse and an excellent appetite. The fever has departed, and the patient is well again. The painted boats are still on the lake, the pretty lamps are still seen twinkling among the trees. There is music now, and dancing, and cards. But the best and truest sign of Wiesbaden’s recovery has yet to be given. The children have been brought from home to the Taunus valley. Let loose from school at midday, they break away from the governess, who is sitting under one of the orange trees in the garden, and come sliding over the slippery floors of the old gaming-rooms; and at night, on the broad walk by the side of the lake in the old scene of revelry and riot, young English maidens lean on their fathers’ arms and receive their first inspiration of melody from the music of Beethoven and Spohr. XXVII. CARNATION ISLAND. At last the weary journey is over. We have sighted the dreaded “Caskets”; our excellent captain, who has been up all night on the bridge of the vessel, has, to his intense relief, heard the assuring sound of the “Whistling Buoy”; the fog that has wrapped us round in its clinging mantle ever since we started at midnight from Southampton has suddenly lifted, and, to the delight of every one on board, we steam slowly, amidst a network of rocks, into the comfortable harbour of St. Peter-le-Port, Guernsey. In an instant all the conditions of life seem to change. The stuffy, nauseous cabin; the sour-smelling linen, that seems good enough for the berths into which holiday travellers are packed like pigs; the horrible lavatory and sanitary arrangements, that provide one “jack towel” for some hundreds of begrimed passengers, and a teacupful of dirty water to cleanse away the personal disfigurement of a night of dirt and groaning; the smell of the engines, from which it is impossible to escape; the eternal moaning of the fog-whistle, answered fitfully through the appalling darkness; the instant danger of collision, and the extreme difficulty of navigation known to every one at all familiar with the Channel Islands,—all these pressing difficulties and personal annoyances are suddenly exchanged for comparative comfort and prospective peace. We are seven hours late, and all Guernsey, the “forties” as well as the “sixties,” have turned out to see the miserable wretches who have been tossing, tumbling, creeping and crawling across the Channel ever since midnight; the boys in their startling blazers, the girls in their smartest frocks. All the excursionists who have not started off on a car round the island, or have postponed a trip to Sark, or to Herm, or to Alderney, have planted themselves at the pier-head to chuckle over the discomfiture of the pale-faced passengers. Whilst the dirty and uncomfortable boat is struggling to her moorings, there is time to look round and take a preliminary peep at the island of Guernsey. Unquestionably it is a pretty spot, and it is hospitable also. Scarcely has the steamer touched shore ere the cheerful islanders come on deck to tempt us with their native produce. Baskets of cool green figs, bunches of black Hamburg grapes, peaches and plums in profusion, tell us that we have arrived at a place of plenty; and it is refreshing after those weary hours of nausea, headache and sea-sickness, to plunge the face deep into the heart of a bouquet of yellow roses, or to enjoy the scent of the gorgeous clove carnations that are the pride of this island of sweet perfumes and health-giving breezes. The first look of a place is everything, and St. Peter-le-Port is charmingly situated. Terrace on terrace the houses rise amidst foliage and greenery to the sky border. Castle Cornet, the grey and imposing old fortress, now in possession of the military, guards the harbour entrance. High on the sunny hill are successively pointed out to us Hautville, where Victor Hugo lived in exile for so many years, and wrote the Guernsey story, “The Toilers of the Sea”; the famous Elizabeth College, that has turned out so many excellent scholars; the old parish church, that dates from William the Conqueror; and many a landmark familiar to the residents of this summer island. What is the first view of Guernsey like? It is not quite like home, and yet we do not seem exactly to have arrived at a foreign port. The sailors and porters are giving vent to their excited feelings in a queer patois that would puzzle an experienced French scholar to understand. Many of the visitors—those women particularly who affect striped yachting caps, or rough deer-stalkers, or headgear of every hideous shape and size—might have been imported hither express from Margate pier; whilst, on the other hand, many of the well-dressed girls, notably the handsome brunette in the dark blue serge dress, with bodice, collar and the revers of the becoming jacket relieved with poppy-red Liberty silk, might have come straight here from the Lees of Folkestone or the promenade of Scarborough. At first Guernsey recalls to one some sunny port on the Mediterranean, particularly now that the sea is so transparent, alternating between purple and mignonette green—sea so clear that you can see to the very bottom, carpeted now with dark seaweed or with yellow sand. Some of us who have travelled to odd places in various quarters of the world find a happier simile in contrasting Guernsey, the simple, picturesque little island, with its lordlier rival Lisbon. We call it the little Lisbon. The sunny quay, the long rows of white houses, the terraced hill, the villas and churches, the narrow lanes that serve the purposes of streets, the High Street, with its tall houses and darkened tenements, the old-fashioned, unpretentious appearance of the place, the avenues of trees leading to the upper parterres of the hillside, certainly have a very decided look of Lisbon about them; and the impression is not lessened when we arrive at the sloping garden, the soft, velvety lawn, and the beds of geranium, carnations, sweet-peas and scarlet gladioli that face the Old Government House of Guernsey, which has in process of time been turned into the cosiest, homeliest and most picturesque of modern hotels. Here, on this pretty plateau overlooking the blue bay; here, in this “hanging garden,” not of Babylon, but of carnation-covered Guernsey; here, sprawling on the soft lawn, or dreaming in deck chairs; here, in the morning sunshine, we can see Herm and Jethou and Sark bathed in light, and circled round with blue; can view the steamers start on their excursions, the white-winged yachts sailing in and out of port, the white and grey sea-gulls skimming across the wind-tossed waters, and the dark cormorants sitting on the seaweed-covered rocks; and here at night, when the harbour lights shine out and the stars make a glory in the heavens, we sit out “under the dreaming garden trees,” in chaffing circles or in whispering couples, until the day is done. In the hospitable little island of Guernsey it is the fashion to make one’s hotel a home. Those who come to the Old Government House are made welcome by a cheery host and most amiable hostess, who make it their business to turn their guests into friends, and insist upon the establishment of a social feeling. It is from the principal hotels that the long excursion cars start every morning to explore the bays and coves and headlands of the island, which has a pretty peep at every corner; here parties are arranged to steam over to Sark, or to pick up shells on the beach at Herm, or to go yachting round about the island, or to try fern-gathering in the water-lanes, or to ride, drive, sail or walk wherever the spirit wills or the weather permits. Scarce one of the Channel Island hotel homes has such a well-deserved reputation for sociability, or so well carries out the picnic idea of holiday travelling, as the Old Government House of Guernsey. The host, for many a long year a most respected resident of Guernsey, is a man of the world; the hostess, who is the soul of geniality and good-nature, has quitted the art which she once adorned for the social duties she so admirably fulfils. In every department of life they seem to have friends; and this is why the military, the learned and artistic professions, and the general public who understand comfort, make a point of coming up the hill in the course of the day to see who is on the terrace lawn of the Old Government House. What wonder, then, with such leaders, that merriment is the order of the day! what wonder that the breakfasts and lunches and dinners are made up of cheery little social parties, scattered about the fine new dining-hall looking seaward, instead of the gloomy, stiff, depressing meals that are found at most Continental and Swiss rendezvous! Who can be surprised that the swallow travellers who come to look in for a few hours are often persuaded to remain a week, since there is not a dull moment in the day, which starts with dawdling on the lawn at the early hour of eight, and ends with rare conversation in the smoking-room, led by some humour-loving Irish priest who has come over for his holiday, or with good music from fair damsels or singing men in the old oak-panelled drawing-room facing the sea, where once on a time the ladies of the governors of Guernsey entertained their guests in a style certainly not more courteous than the one adopted with such success by our host and hostess, who do so much to make modern Guernsey what it is? “What on earth can any one find to do in Guernsey?” is a remark often made by those who have not visited the island, and have not made themselves acquainted with its simple customs. There is certainly no row or rowdyism. Young men and maidens do not assemble on a rickety pier, in startling costumes, to bawl out music-hall songs, or to dance valses to a wheezy band. There are no sands in which to burrow, and no perambulating photographers to pester a party to be taken in a group. The sea-shore is comparatively deserted; but all day long across the island, in and out the leafy lanes, carriages, cars and traps of every description take the visitors to the various points of interest—to the bays where they bathe, to the purple heather slopes where the girls sketch, to the rocky headlands where the men climb, and to the farm-gardens and show places that are laid out with such exquisite care. Let us divide the Guernsey visitors, then, into two divisions—the active and the indolent. The active excursionist has not been in the island for a brief day or two before he will return to the hotel smoking-room with sunburnt face and lecture on Guernsey with as much confidence as if he had spent his life there. He will discuss the relative beauties of Fermain Bay, Saints’ Bay, and the lovely Moulin Huet; he will decide where he lunched best, at Le Gouffre or Corbière; he will describe a visit to the lonely lighthouse, and repeat second-hand the time-honoured jokes of Mr. Jack, the popular guide to Hooper’s four-horsed excursion car. The nautical excursionist despises inland scenery, detests drives through lanes full of fuchsia and myrtle, has no taste for studying the eucalyptus or the aloe—reminiscences of Lisbon and Cintra once more—and must be off to the ocean directly the day dawns. He is not neglected at little Guernsey. He can bathe down by the Port, and as soon as he is out of the water can be off to Herm or Sark, or Alderney or Cherbourg, or Jersey or St. Malo, excursions being provided to one and all these places in the course of the week; or he can sail round the island, and be sure to be back in time for _table d’hôte_ dinner, where he will meet his friends home-returning from one or other of the many Guernsey jaunts. The indolent excursionist, who detests cars, who hates to travel in miscellaneous company, who would not appreciate Mr. Jack’s jokes, and prefers his own meditations, need not go so far afield. A short walk will take him to the heather hills and the fern-covered cliffs, where he can lie down with a book looking at a glorious seascape, and utterly undisturbed by a living soul; for Guernsey, except at stated hours, is the most peaceful of spots that can be found within an easy distance of busy London. Two things, however, are expected from every Guernsey visitor. Regularly every morning he must visit the market; and punctually every evening he must return to the family circle, when the fair-haired German waiter peals at the dinner-bell. Covent Garden itself—which, by the way, derives many of its choicest supplies from Guernsey—cannot boast such a display of fruit and flowers as may be seen in the Guernsey market. The carnation is the flower most cultivated and esteemed in the island. Some of the shops are literally smothered in carnations of every imaginable hue and stripe—not small, puny flowers, such as we see in England, but massy blooms exquisitively scented and delicately pencilled with colours. The variegated gladioli are also in great perfection; and of course it would be difficult to match the grapes, plums, figs and peaches that are grown in Guernsey and her sister islands. Those who are lucky enough to visit Mrs. Huish’s lovely grounds in the centre of the island, and to inspect her beautiful curiosities, collected on many a foreign travel, will of course be taken over the conservatories, where nectarines grow as plentiful as grapes, and where the peaches suspended from the roof are as large as cricket-balls. Next door to the Guernsey market is a public institution of which the island may well be proud. Some years ago two young residents of Guernsey, called Guille and Allès respectively, went to America to face the world and make a fortune. They did both, and have in their prosperity founded a magnificent library at an enormous cost. The books and treasures which have occupied a lifetime’s search have been presented to the island, and in addition to it a lecture room, reading room, and public club beautifully decorated, which will be opened in the course of the year, when it is hoped that one or other of the members of the Royal Family will be induced to inaugurate the “Guille-Allès Library and Recreation Rooms,” which are an honour and credit to the founders and to the island they so well love. Some of the books in this collection are of priceless value, and will be an immense boon to any student settling on the island for rest or work. Between five and six the various excursionists return from land and sea, and make the best of their way home to the comfortable hotels. They may linger on the port to see the toy-yachts sailed by grown-up men on a round pond, with curious gravity, judges, starters and committee men presiding at these evening functions with as much earnestness as if they were fulfilling their duties at Cowes or Ryde. Seldom, however, is the evening dinner table neglected, for “Early to bed and early to rise” is a precept faithfully carried out on the island. We are apt to envy those who view a sunset from the hotel gardens at Interlaken, or the slopes of Mürren; it is pleasant to rest, no doubt, on the shores of Lucerne or Geneva, to feel the invigorating air of Chamounix, or to pitch stones into the sea at Trouville or Biarritz. But when all is said and done, the evening hour, so pleasant anywhere, is sweet enough in the carnation garden that spreads out before the white face of the Old Government House. Gradually the daylight dies, and the fierce summer heat is succeeded by a breeze deliciously cool. The sky, that at dinner time is barred with streaks of burnished gold and corn-flower blue, saddens into grey. Far away in the harbour down below we see the lights of the Weymouth steamer preparing to put out across the rock-strewn bay. The cannon from the fort proclaims the day’s end. Darker and darker become the shadows over Herm and Jethou opposite. White dresses move across the lawn. Dark cloaks flutter under the garden trees, and light laughter is heard in silent corners. The scent of the flowers is mingled with that of well-flavoured cigars. Roars of merriment come from the open windows of the smoking-room. Some one in the drawing-room is singing Tannhauser’s exquisite air to the stars. There has been nothing to mar the pleasure of a summer holiday. “Good-nights” are exchanged in hall and corridor, and the curtain falls upon a day of rest and peace. XXVIII. OCTOBER IN LEAF. Poets and painters have been accustomed to take a despondent view of an English autumn. As a rule they can see little exhilaration or freshness in it. Disconsolate young people wander down dreary avenues scattering the dead leaves that carpet their accustomed path; villagers tramp homewards down muddy lanes or across lonely commons starred with pools illumined by the faint reflection of a sad sunset; there are partings by the stile of a pathetic nature; the firelight glows in the cottage window; the swallow has winged its way to warmer and more consoling climes. Mr. Millais, in perhaps as fine a landscape as ever resulted from his magic brush, has emphasized this accepted truth. He depicts chill October, the time of grey winds and oncoming desolation, the lonely mere, the wind sighing through the bending rushes, the season destitute of fresh colour and of flowers. It is the month that Corot and Millet and Mason loved to paint—the time of melancholy, when peasants uncover their heads at the Angelus bell in the fading sunlight, and ideal country folk find their way homewards in the creeping mist. Hitherto, when October had settled down upon us, it was necessary to travel southwards to find sunshine or warmth. When our English grain was harvested, the gleaners scattered from the fields, the barns and rick-yards overflowing, the plough already busy in the furrow, the thanksgiving service in the village church ended, the apples and fruit all shaken from the trees, the garden relieved from the scarlet of geranium and pale yellow of evening primrose, there were pleasure and promise yet in another kind of harvest accessible by an easy railway journey through the heart of France. Who that has ever seen the early grape harvest round about Reims, or has enjoyed the hospitality of the vine farmers and manufacturers of champagne,—who that has followed the sun down to Bordeaux when they were gathering the purple grapes on one side of the river and the white ones on the other, regrets having been a witness of one of the most picturesque sights that the year of promise affords? Just as, steaming down the Danube and well past Buda-Pesth, the summer traveller gradually feels the approaching influence of the East, as mosques and minarets, veiled women, quaint costumes, the fez and the braided jacket, thick coffee and dog-haunted towns take the place of the accustomed incidents of European civilisation, so does anyone who first visits Bordeaux and Medoc during the grape-gathering seem to scent the gaiety and merriment of adjacent Spain. The porters at the railway station are browner of skin and brighter far of eye, the village girls are more remarkable for the gay colour of their attire. Suddenly, as the train passes, we see on the slope of a sunny hill the labourers in the vineyards breast high at the work that seems a pleasure to them. They come, like our hop-pickers at home, from long distances, and clannishly attach themselves to particular farms. They are housed in barns and temporary dwelling-places, they swarm into hitherto deserted villages; but, continually singing at their work, they appear to have but little care. It is one long round of pleasurable toil. Laughter is heard in the vine rows as the laden baskets are passed from one section to another, and the girls with their coloured kerchiefs are assisted by their olive-skinned companions occupied with the gathering; song enlivens the long outhouses, where now by the feet and now by machinery the juice is pressed out from the grape-laden vats. At night, when work is done, there is sure to be a dance in the village or a chorus in one of the farm barns, and the employers are the best friends in the world to those who so cheerfully assist them. An October in wine-growing France is a season most pleasant to an Englishman. He finds sun without heat and roads without dust. The vineyards, with their stunted rows all green and fresh, enliven the landscape; and when the harvest is over, an abundance of flowers can be found to take to the wife and daughters of the proprietor, who receives the husbandmen at the close of their labour. The most curious circumstance, however, is the suddenness of the change when the beauty of the year is really at an end. We have nothing like it in this country. A frost may come to nip the geranium and blacken the last rose; gradually the leaves may be scattered from the elms and oaks in the park; but in the vineyards of France it is quite different. The frost, like a thief, steals up in the night, and in a twinkling robs the landscape of its beauty. At sunset the whole vineyard might be a carpet of greenery; at sunrise every leaf has fallen, and the château stands disconsolate and surrounded by gaunt rattling stalks. Yet in England sometimes we have an October that becomes the best month of the year. London may have been left heavy with fog or chilled with rain, the streets moist and clammy, the mornings cheerless and the evenings cold. What a change to awaken in presence of a gay and exhilarating October day! Before eight o’clock the grey mists have cleared away and the coloured landscape literally glows under the early influence of the sun that has broken through the clouds. Masses of fern on the hillside over yonder are orange, russet and brown by turn. In the adjacent coppice the trees have scarcely changed hue. The silver limes are yellowing, and the beech trees are turning into innumerable tints of purple and brown, but there are no signs anywhere of desolation or decay. Across the fields, cleared of the grain and, as yet, undisturbed by the plough, a labourer is driving the cattle from the sheds to the pasture-land; in others the sheep are freely feeding on the mangold wurtzel scattered over night upon the short stubble. But it is a mistake to suppose that the purples and the browns, the russets and the oranges, have the autumnal colour all to themselves. Side by side with the unploughed fields are acres and acres of root crops, the green as fresh as it was in summer-time, and the turnips and mangolds standing out of the ground, fine feed for the hares and rabbits that have been nibbling since daybreak on the outskirts of the fields. The freshness of the morning air is indescribable, particularly when the farm-land happens to be adjacent to the cliffs and within sound of the sea. It is not cold or even chilly; there is no necessity for a coat thicker than that worn in summer; but there is a life and sparkle in the air that are exhilarating. It is impossible to resist the temptation of a walk round the garden before breakfast time, whilst the autumn moisture and dew webs are scattered over the lawns and flower-beds. There has not as yet been any frost to hurt or kill, though the gardener shakes his head ominously and thinks of getting in the geraniums as soon as possible. Here we are within a few days of November, and baskets of roses may yet be gathered for the drawing-room table, the hardy “Gloire de Dijon” holding out bravely against its less robust companions. The roses look all the better when the sun comes out, for their drooping heads and their scented cups full of moisture. Phlox and verbena, geranium and French marigold, still hold their own in the old farm-garden, the lilac sedum is gay enough; and, though many of our summer friends are gone, the dahlia and the hollyhock, the lilac-tinted Michaelmas daisy and the rich chrysanthemum, make up a show of colour that delights the eye. Though the swallows have assembled and gone, the lark is rising high into the heavens from the fields over yonder, and at the back of the farmhouse the ducks and geese and Christmas turkeys are rejoicing for the rain that came down in torrents during the night. It is exactly the weather for walking exercise over the downs, along the cliffs, or under the hedges of the country lanes. No distressing heat, no choking dust, no sense of fatigue, disturb the pedestrian, who may gather bushels and bushels of blackberries in the course of his wandering, note the holly with its consistent green, and disturb the birds wrangling over their scarlet feast of hips and haws. Every shrub in the hedgerow is in fruit. Even now all the blackberries are not yet ripe, and the deep and shining red of the mountain ash is contrasted prettily with the grey green of the mountain pine. The sky overhead is blue and cloudless as in springtime, and it is only as the afternoon steals on that the clouds gather in order to band and bar the sky for a sunset worthy the attention of any painter. It is only at this evening hour that may be felt any sense of the sadness of accustomed autumn. Earlier than usual they are driving the cattle home to the farm, but in the darkening fields the sheep keep munching at the roots that the farm lads have scattered in the corner of the field. The sun has almost sunk, the moon being yet invisible in the grey and mottled heavens; yet the labourer toils at the plough in the furrows, but the hedger has packed up his basket and is trudging wearily over the fields towards home. Silently and mournfully the twilight hour creeps on. Behind the dark pine trees that fringe the farm the sun has sunk in banks of orange and purple across an apple-green sky, and from the old ruined church tower standing like a sentinel amongst the forgotten graves in the deserted churchyard at the cliff’s edge, a blundering owl darts out in search of prey, and the bats whirl and flutter about the head of the homeward-bound traveller who rests in profound silence on the low churchyard wall, or, venturing nearer to the coast-line, pauses in this oppressive isolation, whilst the grey fields are wrapped more and more in the advancing mists, and across the greyer sea the cold pale moon throws a tremulous thread of silvery haze. Then it is, the autumn day done, that the lights in the red-curtained windows give pleasant welcome to the tired pedestrian, who closes the white farm gate behind him, and is at home once more. XXIX. LONDON IN LEAF. Of strange paradoxes there is apparently no end; but one of the most curious which arrests our attention is the one which shows London in leaf when every plant, tree and shrub it possesses is being stripped by the melancholy autumn wind. Barnet fair is over; the lavender has been stowed away for the winter in the top long drawer; the favourite mare has passed the Red House, and been cheered by the Yorkshire “tykes” at Doncaster; walnuts are in; the costermongers have begun to decorate their stalls with bunches of grapes, purple and green; cabs laden with children and spades, and private omnibuses toppling over with luggage, hurry from railway stations to suburban homes; Drury Lane Theatre is just about to open; there is a direct social communication between the Metropolis and Brighton; the lilac bushes in the squares are bare; houses are seen from the back windows, which for months past have been hidden with green; bare branches, skeleton boughs, blackened twigs, and unsheltered parks arrest the attention at every turn—and still London is in leaf. Elsewhere there is a melancholy moan in the autumn wind. Under avenues and in old parks the dead leaves are crushed in sadness by the passing foot; there is a sad music in the fresh breezes playing about the gables and finials and corridors of a country house; and the sun, starting out of the heavens for a few brief hours at midday, seems to hint that it will be well to enjoy it while it lasts, for the hour is at hand when it will suddenly lose its power until springtime. It is not so in London—the London full of laughter when the countryside is sad. The autumn leaves, which in the country lanes lie damp and forgotten, in London curl and twirl and dance round and round accompanied by a lively and appreciative simoom of dust. They hurry and scurry along the paths of the London parks, the lively companions of all who, just back to town, are frisking away to Bayswater or St. John’s Wood to look up their friends. They run in and out of the stone corridors and passages in the Inns of Court, and in their fretful energy mount the staircases and tap at the doors and windows to ask if the lawyers are at work again. In the country the dead leaves sing in the minor key, and mean decay; in London their melody is in a triumphant major, and they act as a chorus or refrain to the ballad of work. Turn to the calendar, and next week you will find a striking significance for the 23rd. Look at it and see what it says: “Autumn Quarter commences.” What a sad statement, what a miserable outlook for the unfortunate people out of town! Autumn Quarter commences. We have all felt it, and know it well. At the seaside, the cold mornings and chill evenings, the irritating windows and the rickety lodging door, the absence of amusement and the constantly departing friends, the theatre shut up, the entertainment bills dropping sadly from the walls of the deserted town hall, the yachts housed, and the padlock coming off the lifeboat door; at the country house the damp, spongy lawn, the want of elasticity of the lawn-tennis ball, the sodden condition of the fretful racket-bat, the soft impression of the footprints in the gravel, the moist appearance of the woods,—the men creeping down in the morning to commence their shooting in the half-light, and in the sad half-light of the evening returning home to dinner, the dull interregnum for the ladies between croquet and skating, and the wild passion for “district visiting” which succeeds pleasure and prevents depression,—these are the autumn pictures brought home to the dweller in the country. But when the leaf falls elsewhere, our London is in leaf. Our condition is different from that of other places. We begin to live when others fade. When the apples bloom and the laburnum droops its shower of gold we are exhausted, tired and spent. Our parliament has commenced, our business is in full swing, our law courts are hard at work, our dancers and dinner-givers and pleasure-seekers are in the heat of their desperate struggle. There is nothing new, then, nothing fresh, nothing strange or wonderful, to mark the orthodox commencement of the year. But just now it is a different thing altogether. Now we commence, now we start together, now we are got into line, now our oars are half forward, now our hearts are beating, now we are waiting for the word. We have had our rest, we have been away, we start fair. This is the springtime of our working year. Now London is in leaf. We welcome one another, we forget old differences, we have come back to school. Who knows or cares what was done last half-year? What does it signify who won the prize or was top of the form, who was thrashed, or who got a score at cricket? The luckless last time may be lucky this. Those who were bowled out first ball last season may carry out their bat for a hundred this time. There has been a hiatus, a break, a separation, and we are all a thousand times better for the change. We have got another chance, and we make great plans and sturdy determinations when London is in leaf. Everywhere, around and about, and on all sides, London is in leaf. In the arcades of Covent Garden, London is in leaf. Look at the monster baskets of nuts, walnuts suggesting old bottles of port wine, and filberts eloquent of sherry soon to be transferred to the hale old branches of the social “mahogany tree”! See the yellow lemons promising punch and good-fellowship—the English punch which shall commemorate our return to town, and shall be made stronger yet when we dance with the children round the Christmas tree! See the figs from Sussex and the gay ripe peaches from the rectory wall, the golden orange and the purple plum, the monster melon and the lordly cluster of the grape sent up here from ancestral hall and cottage garden, from extravagant greenhouse and from the village tree, as rich presents to London on its birthday, as congratulatory gifts now London is in leaf! Why, even the fairies have showered upon young London a largesse of mushroom buttons; and, be it known, young London is duly grateful for the appreciative thought of its charming fairy godmother. In all the theatres about the Strand and elsewhere surely London is in leaf! We are not cynical now, or _blasé_, or very deeply critical, or positively determined that the poor drama is dead, or bored with this, that, and the other, or tired of this place and weary of that; or eager to make comparisons, or in a sulky, obstinate manner inclined to crush a poor, precious art with the dead weight of supercilious sneers or cruel indifference. We rush at our theatres as we did in the very earliest days, and we welcome each new-comer with a congratulatory shake of the hand. The placards on the hoardings and the board-bills under the shop fronts are as fascinating as a confectioner’s shop to a greedy boy. The colours are brighter than they used to be—or so they seem, as we study the new casts in a new print. So violent is the sudden rush to the play that it appears as if the theatres of London could not contain the crowd. No one seems to care how many hundred times a play has been seen, so strong is the healthy appetite for amusement. In social, cheery club life, young London is in leaf. There are no difficulties with the old members concerning an abnormal love for reading a dozen newspapers at a time, or a strange peculiarity for monopolising as private property a public corner or a public chair. There are no heart-burnings lest such-and-such a table in the coffee room should have been secured. There is no necessity to hide the third volume of the popular novel under the sofa cushion, or rigidly to enforce the law of silence in the writing room. The very essence of English club life is discovered now that London is in leaf. Of papers and books and corners there are enough and to spare. The dinner tables are interesting with their anecdotes of Swiss scrambles, and the smoking-room is pleasant with the affectionate murmur of the conversation of old friends. There is no stiffness, or reserve, or coldness, or stand-off attitudes just now at the club. They may return, these difficulties, very possibly, in the season; but now we all belong to one family, we welcome one another with genuine expression, we cultivate the courtesy and gentleness which should be the natural result of such social collections. We have become humanised since we left our little narrow limited world. We are very English, and love our people since we landed at Dover, and travelling up to town find London in leaf. Once more, and for the last time, see London is in leaf. Those other leaves have fallen from the London squares and gardens. There is no obstacle to prevent our peeping into London homes. All is exposed and open at the back; all is bright, polished, and plate-glass at the front. Let us just look in, without idle curiosity and without offence. Let us see how they begin their London year, now that its springtime is at hand. In no detective spirit, or with the convict’s log of the informer dragging at our heels, with no hesitation and without the slightest fear, we take our stand and look in. No comparison with other homes is desired; we are not here to collect facts for statistical tables. But it is an honest pleasure to see how the year’s work commences away here from the public gaze, and to watch the gradual development of the “house-leaved bud.” Look in there, and see the father returning to his books, the mother to her needle, the child to its toy. There is not one corner in the wide world like the old study; there is not one window like the one at which she sits and dreams into the future even in noisy London; there is not a toy which the whole wealth of the Lowther Arcade and Soho Bazaar could produce like the battered doll or the headless horse. They are all home at last, now London is in leaf. It was he who for a moment praised the outdoor freedom and influence of continental life; it was she who rejoiced in the short cessation from the daily ordering of dinners and the constant cutting out of children’s frocks; it was the little child who raced and scampered about the farmhouse meadow and thought there was no such proud position in the universe as crowning the sand castle erected under the white cliffs on the Thanet shore. Look at them now, as these three English types commence the English year. See how they rush at their three separate enjoyments: he to his papers and his pipe, she to her linen and her love, they to their tempers and their toys! The holiday is over; they have come to school again; it is the commencement of their work, and the beginning of their earnest year. “God bless them all!” would have been the blessing of Tiny Tim; and how many thousands of such hearty blessings are not sought for now we are all coming home again, and London is in leaf! XXX. A HAPPY VALLEY. I have found out the home of most of the civil Swiss waiters who attend to us at the best London restaurants. I have discovered the summer dwelling-place of the good-natured fellows who sell chestnuts in the street corners of Paris every winter. Well may they wear a pleasant smile on their faces, and go about their work with such evident content, for they have their homes in a smiling valley where the sun always seems to shine! The humble wood cottages where their parents dwell are surrounded by vineyards and waterfalls and acres of wildflowers. A rushing stream, cool from the glaciers, tumbles over the stones in the bed of the mountain torrent, and lulls them to sleep; and, in the heat of the day, on the broken stone walls that surround the little acres of pasturage that they own, green lizards bask in the sun, or dart at the approach of a footstep into the first convenient shelter, whether wall or long flower-strewn grass. The debatable ground between Switzerland and Italy is not sufficiently well known by the English traveller. The cantons of Berne and Uri we know by heart; the land of William Tell, with its lakes and mountains, is as familiar to most of us as the Rhine itself; but the canton of Ticino and the valley of Blénio, the pastoral land that gave up to us years ago the Gattis and Monicos and Bollas and all their countless relatives, who have shown London what thrift and industry can do, is, comparatively, a closed book to the lover of the picturesque. Weary of Lucerne, its feverish excursions and forced gaiety, tired for the moment of the hotel life in Righi-land, I put myself into the St. Gotthard train, rushed through the tunnel, and was safely deposited at Biasca, at the lower end of the lovely valley of the Blénio. All these places, Biasca and Bellinzona and the like, have an Italian sound; and they, as well as their inhabitants, borrow more from the graceful courtesy of Italy than from the rough and determined manner of the Swiss; but in reality this canton of Ticino is Swiss in heart and sentiment. The experience of an isolated day in the beautiful valley of Blénio may not be uninteresting to such as take their summer pleasure by rushing up Swiss mountains, tearing along the borders of sun-struck lakes, and arriving home to swallow an uncomfortable dinner and to dance till they drop in the hall of a Swiss hotel. By five o’clock the sun is stealing across the upper end of the cool valley. All night there has been a roar of rushing waters over the bed of the mountain torrent, grateful because of its sense of life. Truth to tell, those who love the sea, and are pleased with the soothing influence of its sound, resent the cold, monotonous calm of the mountain or the dazzling stillness of the placid lake. All night in the valley of the Blénio we can hear, even in our dreams, the glacier water rushing and roaring over the boulders, and the dash of the waterfall at the back of the whitewashed cottage, among the chestnuts, vines and walnut trees. It is a Catholic valley, and the villagers commence their day with prayer. In primitive fashion, the church bell rings for mass when the sun has risen up to a certain angle of the mountain range; and, similarly, when the daylight has died down to a certain belt of pines the priest has ordered the signal to be given for benediction. The household is stirring early, but with no unnecessary fuss or confusion to the guests. No wearisome host rings a bell to summon his guests to an aldermanic repast of chops and steaks when the day is scarcely warm; but one of the peasant maids, who has been up at cockcrow, brings up a cup of cocoa, with a small loaf of home-made bread and butter displayed on a freshly gathered vine leaf. The boys, who have slept the sleep of the innocent, are clamouring for a bath before the day is oppressively hot. Where shall we go? Not to the ice-cold water of the glacier torrent that forces its way through the valley, but to one of the transparent pools in the intervals of the Dongia waterfall. It is a delicious walk under the cool chestnut trees to the valley cascade. The peasants are engaged on their third hay harvest this year; the women are threshing out the corn with an old-fashioned flail, on a sheet spread under the trees; the good priest, who has said mass hours ago, has assumed a straw hat instead of a biretta, and is directing a watercourse through his cottage garden; the lizards are darting among the stones, and the bees are busy in the clover-covered grass. And what a bathe it is in that transparent pool, half-way up the mountain, with a douche of waterfall, a few strokes of swimming, and, after all is over, a delicious rest in the long green grass, the senses soothed with scent of wild mint and thyme and bee-kissed clover-blossom! Breakfast is a great institution in the Ticino valley. All the householders have caves or grottoes built in the coolest spot, out of the sun. Here they store their wine in huge vats; and attached to every wine-cave is a simply constructed stone arbour, overarched with vines, set about with tables and benches, all of stone. The merry girls have brought up the morning meal from the house—fish from the river, honey from the bills, fruit from the trees; and the cellaress, with a bunch of keys at her girdle, fills a cool jar of red wine from the vats _ab imo cavernæ_. Horace or Mæcenas could not have enjoyed a sweeter meal on the Sabine Farm than we do under the vine shelter of our happy home at Dongia. But the valley of Blénio is not wholly without its points of attraction and interest. Our hostess insists that, as we have breakfasted out of doors, or _sub Jove_, so we shall dine. So a carriage is ordered out to take us to another grotto on the hills, half-way up the valley to Olivone, where a rotund host will be ready to unpack our provisions in the cool shade of a pine forest, and to show us mountain paths to Dissentis, or Lockomania, or Santa Maria, the Hospice, or to Andermatt, if we will return to civilisation that way, and he is delighted to point out glaciers and mountain tops hitherto unexplored by the Alpine Club. And we pass on our road to the evening meal a really delightful spot that should be better known than it is. The valley of the Blénio has its water-cure, the already famous Acqua Rossa or red water, so called from the ferruginous and arsenical spring that the Italian doctors are earnestly recommending for tone to the system and advantage to the skin. But mineral springs are nothing without an hotel; so, as if by magic, there has been erected at Acqua Rossa, only a short drive from Biasca, on the St. Gotthard railway, a comfortable and charmingly situated hotel, where invalids can live for next to nothing, and live well on the good things of this earth, in a deliciously bracing atmosphere. Acqua Rossa is but little known at present; but it is certain that water-drinkers might go farther and fare much worse. Half the value of water-cures is discipline; and here, at the top of the valley, we find a bracing atmosphere, and silence that literally can be felt. Away we go, some on foot, some in carriages, from the hotel terrace at Acqua Rossa; and after a delightful ramble among the pines and the wildflowers, arrive back in Dongia just as the sun is leaving the valley and saying good-night to the villagers. The bell of the village church is ringing for the beautiful service known as Benediction, and most of the peasants creep to the cool cloister before darkness closes round them. No need for hats or cloaks or bonnets. The ladies, sheltered only by their parasols, come out of the house, and make their way to evening service, and join the simple villagers in their earnest thanksgiving before the day is done. The last hymn sung and the last prayer said, out go the candles on the altar, the peasants leave some tribute of wildflowers at a favourite shrine, and priest and congregation wend their way together up the silent valley to their appointed homes. Good-night and mutual blessings are interchanged, and by half-past nine we are all in our rooms half-way to slumberland. I stand at my open window at the hour of advancing night in the silent, happy valley. Not a sound but the chirp of the grasshopper and the ceaseless roar of the mountain torrent. One by one the stars come out, and as it is August time, they start across the heavens and disappear into endless space. What a difference this to the rush and roar of the Strand, to the cries of evening papers and the confusion of cabs! What a relief to the Babel of sound that is the fringe of most of our working lives! I listen, listen, listen, and the silence is almost awful. More stars now, and now the silent moon. Here I stand, looking upon these mountains, lulled by these waterfalls, overpowered by the sense of sleep around me, and, as Margaret says in the play, keep on “thinking, thinking, thinking.” I cannot shut out the peace of the “Happy Valley;” but very soon there is silence, and, grateful for the blessed gift of rest, I am folded round with the soft mantle of delicious sleep. XXXI. THE YEAR’S END AT AN OLD FARM. When the last day of an old year comes upon us, and we are sensible of another change in our lives, the sentiment of the occasion is due to the individual and not to society at large. In London, as in other cities, the year dies, and another one succeeds it, almost unheeded. We go on buying and selling; the shops are open and crowded with customers; the theatres are gay with the first flow of children to the Christmas pantomimes; the same noise, the same confusion, the same worry and unrest, continue as they did on any given day in any given year. There is little solemnity in the manner of bidding farewell to an old year, be it bad or good. Round and about us there are few signs either of regret or thankfulness; there is no ceremonial of pathos or hilarity. A stranger coming into London on New Year’s Eve would not be able to distinguish it from any other important day of the week or year. All goes on as usual. The streets echo with the roar of ceaseless traffic, the passengers go hurrying or jostling one another on the pavement, dense fogs and mists still cling “like a face-cloth on the face” of a saddened city, and, so far as outward appearances go, if there be any effort to mark the last moments of the dying year, it is one of studied indifference and neglect. The individual, however, cannot divest himself of the idea that something ought to be done to remember what is passing and what is to come. Each one in his own way stands somewhere or other at the grave of the dying year. One takes down his desk and remembers absent friends; another goes silently off to the midnight service, to kneel unashamed and whisper a prayer for those in trouble and those at rest. Some there are who join hands round a convivial bowl and sing “Auld lang syne”; others go quietly downstairs and, opening the street door as the bells ring out, clasp hands in silence, looking out into the dark streets, but very far beyond them in imagination. All that happens in the family circle may be conventional, but the greetings are sincere. When the door closes and the clock has struck, a weight seems to have been lifted off the heart. Absolution has been pronounced. We face life free again. The least superstitious people—those who care very little who first crosses the threshold of their houses on New Year’s morning—cannot help feeling that there is a change in their daily lives. They will have to date their letters a new way to-morrow morning. A new croupier has sat down at the gaming table of life. Luck, somehow or other, may change. But whatever individuals may do—whether they go to the church and say their prayers, or stay at home and entertain their friends, or empty the punch-bowl, or take hands on the doorstep, or write letters, or sing songs—whether they forgive or forget—it is impossible for any one to remain unimpressed by the year’s farewell as it may be seen out of London, far away from the town, in the heart of the country, where no noise prevails and where little merriment is heard. There is a sadness in the very atmosphere, charged as it were with tears of moisture. Grey rainclouds hang mournfully over a landscape wholly in the minor key. The hedges, bare and leafless now, show drops of water on every twig; the skeleton grasses in the undergrowth glisten with exquisite diamond dust of dew. A few months ago the farm-land was warm and ruddy, the earth turned up red and brown to the advancing plough, the ferns framing the coppice were bright and golden, the green of the root crops gave to the landscape a certain brightness and life. All is changed now. The earth is black, the oversoil is sad and grey, the roads are melancholy and muddy. A green Christmas, as it is called, sounds prettily enough when it is spoken; it is not, however, so picturesque to the eye: it means that the first-sown wheats are being choked with rank grasses and foul weeds; that the carters cannot get along the lanes to carry manure to the fields; that the soil is so heavy and so dead with wet that the farmer is almost in despair. He would like just now to welcome a light bright frost, hard enough to pulverise the soil for the sowing and to make the lanes and the roads accessible for his heavy waggons, constantly employed between the farmyard and the distant fields on the estate. Come, then, into the farm-garden, and see if you can find any flowers there; come to the old white gate where we sunned ourselves in the summer-time. The inside of the old farmhouse looks bright enough this New Year’s Eve; but Art has supplied what Nature has denied us. A great mass of colour in the centre of the parlour first attracts the eye—yellow and brown and red and deep green. Examine closely, and you will find that careful and skilful fingers have been stitching holly berries and immortelles and golden everlastings upon the shining holly leaves and upon the bare stalks with surprising effect. Never did the farmhouse look so cheerful. A great bunch of evergreen greets the visitor in the doorway, the pictures and window-frames are decorated with twigs of holly, and across the walls of the best sitting-room runs a device of welcome made of yellow everlastings on a groundwork of pink calico. Outside, the prospect is not so cheerful. The garden, that used to smile in the sunshine with phlox and verbena and geranium, looks as if it had been trampled on and crushed underfoot. The white farmhouse gate has turned stone grey with the moisture that hangs on it. There is a sad collection of dead stalks and leafless shrubs. Surely there must be one flower left here in this old farm-garden, where we saw the corn ripen under the mill such a short time ago, as it seems; there must be something to remind us of the past. Yes, there are three flowers left. Down the small avenue of the apple trees a tuft of chrysanthemum, terra-cotta red, has lived on right up to the last day of the old year; one blackened rosebud is still as true to the famous bush by the farmyard gate that looked so beautiful last summer; and best of all, as it seems to-day, up in a warm corner, under an old moss-covered wall, may be found just two clots of early primrose, the pretty advance-guard of the flower army of the coming spring. Elsewhere there is nothing but death, decay and desolation. Up the lanes towards the sea you may wander, and find little life but the evergreen of the holly in the leafless hedge, and just one hidden bunch of yellow gorse to show that Nature has a smile left upon her face. At this old farmhouse by the sea it is indeed the end of the year. Time’s destiny is written on the very face of the landscape. There is no need for church bells to ring, or clocks to strike, or for any sign to show us that the death-hour has come. Let us mount together to the cliffs’ edge, close by the deserted churchyard and the ruined tower, high up where the poppies grew so luxuriantly in the ripening corn; let us stand side by side at the old corner, where there used to be spread for us such a garden of wildflowers. Is this the sea, so silent and so still, stretched out like a grey and waveless lake before us? Imagination cannot reconcile a winter sea with such a scene. There is not a footprint on the blackened sand; there is not a ripple upon the silence of the waters. A grey sky, a dark and flowerless land, a sea of inexpressible sadness. It is the close of the year; and it looks, as we stand lost in imagination, like the end of the world. In summer-time the children used to laugh as they played under the broken wall of the ruined churchyard; later on, the harvest men sang and shouted at their work as they flung the wheat into the waggons, fearful of the advancing storm. But now there is no sound either on sea or land. The soil is so soft, you cannot hear the cutting of the plough, the children have gone down from the cliffs to the village, and only two sailors are standing at the cliffs’ edge looking out to sea, but saying nothing. There have been sunsets elsewhere of surpassing beauty—green and orange, and crimson and gold. But here on the brown cliffs there cannot be a sunset, for there has been no sun. The grey morning changes to the greyer afternoon; the curtain slowly falls, and then comes the night. Walking along the cliffs’ edge this New Year’s Eve, over the grass down, past the white lighthouse tower, it seems like a recollection in a dream. It is the same, and yet not the same. Not a human being has apparently been here since the summer-time. The gay wildflowers, yellow and scarlet, are dead; the ferns are blackened and seemingly burnt into the mossy grass so often trodden by the happy visitors of the little seaside holiday home who loved to come up here from the village. The turf is light and springy, but the gaiety is gone. Here are the names of the lovers cut into the turf in a grassy by-path, just as they were left; here are the footprints of sand-shoes in the soft ground at the edge of the cliff. Look down upon the beach and see what desolation. Not a boat, not a yacht, not a target or a bathing-machine. What a merry village it used to be,—every hole and corner full, children scrambling up the paths, girls with streaming hair fresh from their morning bath! Where are they now? The lodging-houses are boarded up, the hotels are empty. The stranger who comes down from the cliff and enters the village is taken for a ghost of the departed summer. So homeward, still together, past the lighthouse, throwing its rays now on the deserted country, now on the lonely sea. The night creeps on, and the melancholy is more and more intense. Apparently the villagers do not care much about the passing of the old year. It is early yet—scarcely theatre time in London—but already there are lights in the upper windows and signs that the villagers intend to sleep the end of their year away. At last the farm is reached in the darkness. There is not even the faint glimmer of a moon to guide us homewards. Hour succeeds hour. The farmhouse clock strikes eleven, but not a soul is stirring. No carols, no songs, no sound of revelry anywhere in this forgotten corner of the world. Listen for the sound of church bells, and you will not hear an echo. The village is asleep; the ringers are in bed. The old miller is dozing over his open Bible; his wife sits by his side and gazes into the fire; the little daughter trims the lamp anew and waits. Let us go out into the darkness, lean over the old farm gate and hear the silence. It is silence everywhere: silence across the lonely fields, silence on the lonelier sea; no light in any window, no sparkle or star in the darkened heavens; nothing of life and hope but the flash and the gleam of the lighthouse on the sea down miles away. Listen again, and try if you can hear a bell or a clock strike. Nothing but silence. Far off, a dog barks in a distant farm. It is the time now. Listen again: do you hear nothing? Nothing; no moan, no whisper. There is no breath or pulse in the old year. He has gone. Thank God we were together at the passing hour! Is there nothing more to be said out here by the old farm gate—nothing more to be done? Nothing but hope and the future—nothing but the complete unity that is the very sweetness of life. On the lighted table by the side of the New Year’s fire, as we return from the darkness, a volume of Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” lies open, strangely enough at the following passage, descriptive of unity: “And the unity of earthly creatures is their power and their peace. Not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed stones and solitary mountains, but the living _power_ of trust and the living power of support—of hands that hold each other and are still!” Thus upon the old year’s tombstone we both write “Finis!” and together we journey onwards still into the land of shadows! Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ltd., London and Aylesbury. TRANSCRIBER NOTES Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed. Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur. [The end of _Blossom-Land and Fallen Leaves_ by Clement Scott]