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In tlie south, in the valleys, and along the edges of the Fjords, 

 wherever there is an opportunity, vegetation springs up and is 

 taken advantage of by the poor farmer and cotter. 



I have mentioned how suddenly summer comes in Norway. 

 The consequence of this is there is a beautiful freshness and 

 special green about the grasses that you don't meet with else- 

 where. 



Herbert, the poet, speaking of this sudden and beautiful 

 development of Nature, says : — 



Oh, 't'is the touch of fairy hand 

 That wakes the spring of Northern land, 

 It warms not there by slow degrees, 

 With changeful pulse the uncertain breeze. 

 But, sudden, on the wondering sight. 

 Bursts forth the beam of living light. 

 And instant verdure springs around 

 And magic flowers bedeck the ground. 



The Stalheim cleft, with its two waterfalls and winding, 

 well engineered road with 14 zig-zags, and the Naerodal Valley 

 and Fjord, are well worth the trouble of going all the way to 

 Norway to see. 



Such was the variety and interest of these few days of inland 

 scenery that I cannot put my ideas more pithily than Euskin has 

 put it : — " There is not a moment of any day of our lives when 

 Nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, 

 glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and 

 constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite 

 certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual 

 pleasure." 



THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT AND ITS 

 EFFECT ON OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD. 



By JOHN WHITTAKER. October 23rd, 1888. 



To many members of the Club, Local Government, with its 

 straggling train of scarecrows — crime, lunacy, pauperism, sew- 

 age disposal, and infectious diseases — crossing and recrossing 

 the stage of local administration, for all the world like those 

 ragged rascals with whom Sir John Falstaff refused to march 

 through Coventry, will seem sadly out of place in this, our little 

 Utopia of letters. But is this really so ? The great Hercules 

 himself was an improvement commissioner — witness his cleans- 

 ing the Augean stables — and Plutarch, on his own confession, 



