THE FIRST TRANSFORMATIONS 



added a Rose- Garden between screens of rustic woodwork 

 which are to blaze in the full luxuriance of the adorable 

 Wichuriana tribe. 



Where the jungle waxed thickest, fair paths have been 

 cleared. An avenue bordered by a double row of tall 

 slender Pines runs from top to bottom of the hill, with a 

 view of our neighbour's buttercup field on the one hand, 

 and of our own Bluebell and May-tree glade on the other. 

 It requires a positive effort of imagination to recall that 

 this was a literally 

 impenetrable thicket 

 when we first came. 



Nor is the house less 

 altered. As it was 

 hinted before, a 

 small white Surrey 

 house has, by 

 some singular, 

 scarce lyinten- *" 

 tional process, become enchanted into an Italian 

 Villino. Of course, some structural alterations were 

 necessary. 



On entering the red-tiled hall <once the pantry!), at the 

 end of which the glass door giving on the terrace frames 

 Verrochio's little naked boy, struggling with his big fish, 

 flanked on each side by Cypresses, you might easily fancy 

 yourself at Fiesole or Bello Sguardo, but for the unmis- 

 takable northern stamp of the moorland beyond. Passing 

 through the other glass doors into the inner hall, the first 



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