2 COUNTRY LIFE 



Penmarch, and the Pointe de Raz on the Breton coast 

 are nearly as wild as anything in Devon or Cornwall. 

 Where the line of railway from Liege to Cologne is 

 carried along the slopes of the valley of the Vesdre, 

 you look down on meadows and rushing streams that 

 remind you of the pastoral picturesqueness of Hereford- 

 shire^ / But {everywhere you are struck by the sharp 

 lines 1 v of v demarcation that are drawn between the 

 ; country 1 ancf He l J:owns. Here and there you may 

 come upon an isolated chateau that looks as if it had 

 been transplanted from some neighbouring boulevard, 

 and then adapted to its rural site by being fitted with 

 turrets and bartizans. If there is a park, it is shut in 

 from plebeian intrusion by forbidding walls of stone ; 

 and the highest praise you can possibly bestow on such 

 a place is, that there are turf and flower-beds remind- 

 ing you of England. No thought of coveting it ever 

 comes across your mind, except in so far as it may 

 be the sign of an easy fortune. On the contrary, you 

 are inclined to pity the owner, and to wonder what in 

 the world he does when he goes there. Doubtless he 

 has the means of amusing himself indoors, so far as the 

 cellar, salle-a-manger, and a billiard-room can help him. 

 The ladies, in toilets of affected simplicity, may saunter 

 on the terrace of an evening, and sip their coffee in a 

 frescoed temple covered with creepers, looking down 

 on the water-lilies in a formal fish-pond. But theirs, 

 after all, is only the life of the town, with all that is 

 dullest in the country superadded. The brand-new 

 stucco of the facade that formidable wall, with its 



