272 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINN&US 



each other all so friendly in the shade of great umbels 

 of elder, such as must have made Linnaeus think of his 

 former comrade Artedi, now gone to England. This 

 sudden drop into summer is very striking in coming from 

 the North, and must have been especially so to the born 

 Swede Linnaeus. It is like the descent into Italy from 

 the Alps, or into Damascus from Mount Hermon 



whitened with eternal sleet, 

 While summer in a vale of flowers lies sleeping rosy at her feet. 



There is less length of daylight to see it by, however : 

 the sun sets three half-hours earlier here. One is 

 startled to see the distance purpling under the golden 

 light, with sunset reflected in the eastern banks of rose- 

 tipped pearly clouds ; and to feel the humid airs of grate- 

 ful evening mild distilling from the greenery of fat and 

 fertile Holstein a land of plenty and prosperity, with 

 hedges deep in barley and long grass to mow, and 

 yonder towers and spires of Kiel all grey under the veiled 

 misty golden moon. 



The blossoming gardens here are turned to fairy- 

 land, as it would have seemed to Linnasus ; to us it is 

 more like the opera stage, with groups of girls, with 

 faces more of the pretty Danish type than like the 

 plainer Germans, dressed in short full skirts of plum- 

 coloured velveteen, or of dark stuff with a coloured 

 velvet band round the hem, tight-fitting basque bodices 

 of black velveteen with very short puffed sleeves, showing 

 the arm bare high above the elbow, and white bib aprons 

 altogether absurdly like the theatre, and quite as pretty. 



