268 CHAPTER XXXVI. 



The plant is very common here, but this particular 

 shrub, or rather tree, was the largest I have ever seen 

 of that species, so I attempted to intercede for it. 

 This Nicotiana, I said, was probably the finest on the 

 Riviera, and an ornament to his property. But the 

 shrub was doomed: the landlord feared, forsooth, 

 that robbers would climb up by it and enter his 

 window ! 



If a negro is ordered to cut down one of the 

 giants of the forest, he will sometimes hesitate : 

 " There's too many jumbies in it." There are, unfor- 

 tunately, no jumbies in any of the Riviera trees ; or 

 rather the natives see no jumbies in them. These 

 "plages ensoleillees," like the rest of Europe, are 

 " entgottert," to use Schiller's word. 



When will each town and village once again 

 possess its sacred grove ? A shady spot which no 

 human hand may desecrate, where plant and bird 

 may find an inviolate asylum ; a true Arboretum, 

 dense and tangled ; no gravel walks, no trim parterres, 

 no " bedding plants," no close-cut grass. We want 

 something which shall bring the townsman into con- 

 tact with Nature, and help him to understand that 

 feeling which Goethe expresses in his noble opening 

 lines of the " Iphigenie auf Tauris " : 



" I enter now with awe and reverence 

 Your sacred shade, ye ancient lofty trees." 



The sacred grove attached to every town should 

 not be that piece of land which can be had at the 

 lowest price, but rather, to use Nathaniel Haw- 

 thorne's words, that spot where the sense of beauty 

 is gratified by a lovelier shade than elsewhere, and a 

 more exquisite arrangement of lake and wood and hill. 



