24 COUNTRY LIFE 



always in luck in his especial objects. He is perpetu- 

 ally stumbling in the course of his wanderings on 

 feasts or fairs, or anniversaries or border games, and 

 he is sure to make friends among garrulous merry- 

 makers, storing his memory with their old-world tales. 



If we desired to do the honours of England to a 

 foreign friend, whether he came over the Channel or 

 across the Atlantic, after giving him a glance at the 

 immensity of London or the bustling prosperity of the 

 port of Liverpool, we should invite him to accompany 

 us on such a driving tour as Mr. Black describes in his 

 u Adventures of a Phaeton." He might growl at the 

 climate on the days when it was wet or windy ; but 

 he would have to confess in candour, in any average 

 summer, that our watery atmosphere was not with- 

 out its advantages. We have often revelled in the 

 marvellous transparency of the air in districts like the 

 upper valleys of the Alps, or even the higher plateaux 

 of central Germany. Sitting before the door of your 

 mountain inn, in the Engadine or the Oberland, you 

 fancy you might distinguish the chamois at their 

 gambols on the opposite snow-slopes ; while in the 

 German uplands you can almost count the buttons on 

 the coat of the bauer who is driving the waggon with 

 the team of oxen against the distant sky-line. But 

 there is a wearisome monotony of effect in the 

 brilliancy of that extreme limpidity. It cannot com- 

 pare with the rich variety of lights among the softened 

 shadows and changing colours of an English landscape, 

 as you look down over waving crops, verdant meadow, 



