242 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
used to go and worship it; and never does the almost 
exotic charm of the plant evaporate; it is so profuse and 
so lovable in blossom that one can hardly, somehow, 
believe a thing thus richly dainty to be a native of our 
well-trodden, humdrum land. And, with the blue of 
Campanula hederacea, the Pimpernel becomes loveliness 
made more lovely. Nature, when she turns her mind to 
the matter, is indeed a cunning artist, and arranges many 
a picture of bewildering beauty. Have you ever seen the 
orange of Arnica blending, on a high, rough mountain- 
side, with the violet daisies of Aster alpinus and the great 
shaggy bells of Campanula barbata, soft and pale in their 
delicate china-blue? Or the violent sapphire of Gentiana 
bavarica grading with the gentle azure of Myosotis rupi- 
cola against the ardent matted rose of Androsace glacialis, 
with the snow-and-gold of Ranunculus alpestris to com- 
plete the harmony? Or, for a subtler effect, a meadow 
crowded with the celestial stars of Gentiana verna, amid 
the innumerable lilacs, mauves, purples, tyrian darknesses 
of a hundred million mountain pansies ? 
The most subtle picture, though, that I ever saw, lies 
far back in my memory of the Alps. I was descend- 
ing through a golden sunset, from Beatenberg to 
noisome, clamorous Interlaken. ‘The evening was clear, 
calm, and radiant; the town lay very far below us, 
unseen, unguessed, unguessable amid the benign tran- 
quillity of the hills. And suddenly we came out into 
a marshy clearing of the woodland, falling away steeply 
down towards the sunset. And the whole slope, against 
the fiery light of the West, was thick with the soft rose 
of Primula farinosa, abundant as sands of the sea, and 
among it everywhere stood the livid, purple spikes of 
Bartsia alpina, incandescent and amethystine in the red 
glow. Now the Alpine Bartsia, with dull, labiate flowers, 
is coloured, bracts and leaves and all, with a most 
