52 <I(AMBLES OF A VOtMINIS 



flowers of the Mediterranean might be brought to us 

 unfaded to fill the gap that winter had made in our 

 dull garden borders. There were no fragrant lilies then 

 in every florist's window no bright anemones to lend 

 their freshness to the dingy streets. Now, when every 

 tropical forest is searched for rare and curious blooms, 

 and Dives pays cheerfully a hundred pounds for an 

 orchid of which the fellow is unknown in Europe, even 

 the sad eyes of Lazarus are cheered by the colour that 

 the flower-girls scatter in the streets. 



Without this spoil of distant lands brought near us 

 by our modern aids, how long would seem the pause 

 between the last rose of summer and the first shy flowers 

 of April ! 



The greatest boon, no doubt, that spring brings with 

 it is in the lengthening of the days. Without gas or 

 paraffme, with dull oil lamps and the feeble glimmering 

 of candles, the dark of winter nights must have been 

 one of the greatest hardships of living in the country. 



Our nights are dark no longer. The plunder of dis- 

 tant meadows cheers the dull days of winter with their 

 fragrant beauty. But we hear no earlier than our 

 fathers did the cuckoo's cry. The years have made no 

 change in the home-coming of the swallows. It is in 

 April that they come back to us. There is, indeed, no 

 month in all the year in which they have not been seen. 

 It has been suggested that those which have been 

 observed in January and February might have wintered 

 in the island, though not, as our forefathers supposed, 

 asleep in hollow trees or under water. Boswell records 



