SUMMER IN THE ALPS 65 



consort with such loveliness and yet not disturb it I 

 Curious that so much discord should create such 

 harmony ! After all, dirt, as Lord Beaconsfield is 

 said to have remarked, is only matter out of place ; 

 and here is discord quite at home. Untamed 

 music amid untamed Nature, with net result — an 

 entrancing harmony past imagining. 



It is a very different scene from that of spring. 

 In spring these sounds would have struck an 

 unreasonable note. Nature's awakening would 

 have been too rude and noisy ; there was a shy 

 reserve about her wildness which it would never 

 have done to so break in upon. But Summer's 

 season is more flamboyant. Nature is in the 

 fuhiess of hfe, and something of loudness is noc 

 out of tune. Vulgarity ? No, that is not the right 

 word. Summer in the Alps has nothing of 

 vulgarity. Demureness, certainly, has vanished, 

 but a great relative refinement remains. Summer's 

 colours may be gaudy, her life may be demonstra- 

 tive, but there is nothing in this that jars or hurts 

 our sense of fitness. All things are in tune with 

 the key-note of lustiness and vigour ; all things are 

 bent upon reaping a full harvest from the fierce sun, 

 and are rightly ahve with appropriate colour and 

 gesture. Maybe this colour and gesture would be 



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