Jane Admires 



and find yourself opposite a shop glowing with 

 oranges and lemons. . . . Are they genuine, or did 

 they, too, come from Birmingham ? . . . Genuine 

 enough as things go ; and this is Florence, and 

 over against Fiesole is a great white bird. . . . 

 Heads are all craned to look at it. Indeed it is 

 no bird, but an aeroplane : and this is very 

 much the twentieth century. 



There's a digression ! . . . To recover from it, look 

 out of the window at the roses, and the white wall 

 over which hang laburnum, clematis, and ceano- 

 thus brilliant ; and there, in the larch, is a squirrel 

 frolicking ; one of the rascals who take all my 

 filberts and Kentish cobs in the autumn. You 

 would never think that the road is there, only 

 twenty yards away. Such a jolly road, leading from 

 the world, through the wilderness, down even to 

 the sea, whence the winds come full of melody that 

 they murmur to the pines. . . . And the herons 

 squawk like gulls, so that here it is easy to 

 satisfy the natural craving to pretend that every- 

 thing is something else. . . . 



Now you shall admire the brass and copper, and 

 the mirrors which make such charming pictures. 

 To my mind, a mirror should never be hung where 

 it cannot show its reflection and make a little 

 picture of its own. In the convex mirror above the 

 d 33 



