AUGUST 193 



arrears of wet to be liquidated. But a spell of such 

 weather as carried us through last July (1898), it would 

 be impossible to beat hard to match anywhere. I have 

 never been to the West Indies, but I have sampled 

 the climate of Athens, next to which I commend the 

 Italian Riviera east of Genoa (far more delicately limpid 

 than the western Riviera) ; the air of the Engadine 

 is exhilarating, that of Norway in June is divine, and 

 early summer on the Loire is not amiss ; but for down- 

 right loveliness for dewy sparkling mornings for 

 basking noons which parch not for long-drawn gloam- 

 ings lingering into the brief lucid night of the north 

 give me, in July, the western land pierced with long 

 winding inlets from the ocean, the mountain purple with 

 heather on its seaward face; on its landward aspect 

 falling sharply among green lawns and grey cliffs, 

 feathered with birches, into the secret glen. 



These were there nothing to boot these, the mem- 

 ory and the love of them were enough to make 

 any one who has not tasted their delights spurn London 

 as men fled of old from the cities of the plain 

 enough to nerve any one to encounter that intolerable 

 jumble of tides off Ardnamurchan so he might reach 

 the Happy Isles where letters come but thrice a week 

 in fine weather, and in foul weather not at all. 



But there is more than these. Believing, as I must 

 and do, that the only worthy, blameless, and altogether 

 honourable ambition of man is the capture of salmon 

 and trout with the artificial fly, and seeing that the 

 West Highlands abound in streams and lochs greatly 



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