i88 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



group of London pigeons that caught the artist's eye. 

 At any rate, the bird has got into an important 

 national record, as once or twice did the kite of old, 

 a London bird that has ceased to be. 



Whether or no the Cheapside pair of pigeons are 

 worth the whole flock of the St. Paul's pigeons hard 

 by is a question to be fought out between the senti- 

 mentalist and the mere lover of beauty. Surely 

 nothing is more beautiful than the wild eddying of 

 the common domestic pigeon round this smoke- 

 blackened and rain- washed pile ! They exhibit most 

 of the varieties caused by domestication, though 

 scarcely any of the eccentricities of form that the 

 breeder has grafted on the graceful wild form, and 

 authorities say that year by year the flock more and 

 more reverts to the ancestral uniform of the " blue 

 rock." The swelling dome of St. Paul's is as much 

 their own wild domain as the cliffs of Scarborough 

 ever were, but Olympians friendlier to the mortals 

 that crawl round its base it would be impossible to 

 imagine. 



The gardens in which bird and man meet are but 

 the thinnest of green lines between the majesty of the 

 cathedral and the insistent, sordid traffic of the street. 

 At first it seems impossible to shut out the sound and 

 the sight of the motor-'bus. It is a sight of some of 

 the oldgfoundations that date from beyond the great 

 fire that performs this magic. These noble fragments, 

 peeping hard and true from the velvet of the grass, 

 are enough to make the least of us psychometrists. 

 If we dared sit on one of them we should see the 

 whole pageantry of Tudor London go by, and find 

 Roman chariots far more credible than electrobuses 



