6 COUNTRY LIFE 



work interlaced through the rough lime walls, hanging 

 along the slope in the single street that leads down to 

 the little place, with the village inn and the post-house. 

 There is a pleasant odour of fresh hay and newly-milked 

 cows ; everybody seems in easy circumstances, and the 

 local authorities look after the poor ; but it is plain 

 that they must labour hard to live, and that life shows 

 its serious side to all of them. Not a man of them 

 who does not place the summum bonum of recreation in 

 a Sunday or saint's day that is celebrated by free indul- 

 gence in beer and tobacco, or a longer chat on local 

 politics. Naturally that marked feature is brought out 

 conspicuously in those writers of the nations who are 

 the most keen to appreciate all that is most enchanting 

 in the scenery of their respective countries. Our 

 remarks on the Schwarzwald, though the results of a 

 long familiarity with it, might have been borrowed 

 almost verbatim from the pages of Hacklaader, who 

 narrates in his " Pictures of Travel " the very excursion 

 we have been imagining. Perhaps no French novelist 

 of our own time or of any other excelled more abso- 

 lutely in delicate landscape drawing than George Sand, 

 and at the same time she had made herself the un- 

 rivalled mistress of the subtle refinements of rustic 

 character. Her whole heart went out in her writings ; 

 she made her enchanting studies either from memory or 

 observation of scenes endeared to her by happy associa- 

 tions ; and her dreams of the most perfect lot on earth 

 were closely linked with a life in the country. In 

 " Flamarande," one of her latest works, her love for 



