VIII APOLOGIA PRO BAMBUSIS MEIS 209 
to tamper with it. But farther up the hill there is a spot 
snugly screened from the cruel blasts which come from north 
and east, where, when the great oaks and elms, shorn of their 
summer bravery, are mere gaunt skeletons, there is still 
some shelter and some warmth. Here, amid the sparkling 
glitter of a holly grove, are all manner of beautiful evergreens 
—rare pines, steepling fir-trees, rhododendrons, cypresses, 
junipers. A tiny rill trickles over the green velvet of the 
rocks, with ferns peeping out of crannies in which many an 
Alpine treasure is hushed to rest, waiting the warm kiss of 
spring and the song of the birds, that, ike Orpheus with his 
lute, shall raise the seeming dead from the grave. Tall rushes 
and gracefully arching Bamboos, hardly stirred by the wind, 
nod their plumes over the little stream from which the rays 
of a December sun have just strength enough to charm the 
diamonds and rubies and sapphires; a golden pheasant, all 
unconscious of a human presence, is preening his radiant 
feathers by the water side. It is a retreat such as the fairies 
might haunt, and where in the bitter Christmastide a man 
may forget the outside world, and for one too brief hour revel 
in a Mid-winter Day’s Dreain of glorious summer. In the 
planning of this sun-trap surely the most captious critic will 
not cavil at the addition of such strangers as may seem best 
suited to fill in a scene which may not be English, and yet is 
in harmony with, and lends a new charm to, the surroundings 
with which it is contrasted. 
Whatever may be the cause—and now that one may put a 
girdle round the earth in little more time than it took to ride 
post from the Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s and back a 
hundred years ago, it seems evident that travel has much to 
P 
