38 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



tent behind us, and no wonder that time after time he halts 

 disgusted, no cunning of eye and hand sufficing to catch those 

 living, glowing tints suffused with sunlight over the birch-trees, 

 and dropping like a flower-fall (to coin a word for the nonce) 

 into breezy space. Who has ever yet seen heather adequately 

 painted ? Miss Mutrie at present, Van Huysum in old days, 

 would exactly limn a sprig of it ; but it is a very different thing 

 to cope with a whole surface of glowing heather, with all its 

 reflected lights, manifold depths, and fainter shadows, and 

 trembling twinklings of rose-red passing into the grand sunlit 

 fulness of purple perfection. From this living sheet of amethyst 

 turn we the mental kaleidoscope to South Devon, where the 

 heather-clad hills rise, say from the Otter Valley towards the 

 west. The prospect has lost the prevailing charm of purple 

 monotone, but it has gained in richness as compensation. 

 Yellow bog-asphodel spikes and creamy white bedstraw, pink, 

 white and blue milkwort, foxgloves and mullein with woolly 

 leaves and yellow flowers, and many more contrasts of colour, 

 like Proserpine's stores hurriedly emptied upon Enna, crowd 

 every square yard of the stony moorland, while dwarf furze, 

 ablaze with living gold, throws into prominence the red breadths 

 of heather. Flora's richest gifts in July cover these bare hill- 

 sides, topped here and there with dark pines, while blinding 

 gleams of blue sea to the left and in front enhance the effect. 

 It is very beautiful in its own way, but the soberness of Northern 

 heather is lost in the general glow. This might be a lotuseater's 

 paradise ; here there is room for imagination, for peaceful rest 

 from work, and golden dreams. In Scotland, with foot on the 

 heather, red as with the life-blood of its sturdy rocks, and run- 

 ning up their shoulders till stopped by the snow-wreaths which, 

 even in summer, linger on the highest corries, the heart beats 

 quicker and gathers strength for deeds. So Devon has her 

 worthies who, as old Prince tells us, have sung and painted, 

 and roved the seas in quest of adventures. Scotland's sons 



