WINTER ASPECTS 209 



the clouds are full of light. No sooner does the rain 

 cease than the rich glistening red begins to grow dull 

 and fades as the wet dries. In a little while, in a 

 drying sun and wind, the red hue quite vanishes 

 and the fern is again the old faded rag it was 

 before. 



In this part of West Cornwall there was more furze 

 and bracken together than I had ever seen, where 

 both plants grow in the greatest luxuriance, unmixed 

 with other tree and bush vegetation, and with nothing 

 among it but the grey lichened rocks which served to 

 intensify the effect of the intermingled sombre green 

 and glistening rich red. Nor had I long to wait for 

 the falling drops which brought the loveliness into 

 existence, seeing that it rains on most days, and when 

 it was mild and the wind not too strong the rainy day 

 was nearly as good as the rare golden day of clear 

 skies and genial sunshine. 



On one occasion when I was out in the hills feast- 

 ing my sight on the beautiful strange aspect of things, 

 when the rain was so heavy and continuous that it 

 soaked through my waterproof and wetted me, I was 

 surprised to find a lady artist at work under a big 

 umbrella. She was one of a colony of forty or fifty 

 artists in the small town close by, but the first one I 

 had seen out in that wild place in wet weather. Her 

 subject was a small, rather squalid-looking farm-house 

 on the further side of a narrow green field one which 

 could have been better painted on a fine day. I was 

 told that the artists of this one colony alone turn out 

 about a thousand landscapes a year, and I wondered if 



