MAY gi 



weeds. A quantity of daisies showing up their white 

 faces, though pretty in theory, are in fact very unbecom- 

 ing to the borders on a sunshiny summer's day. 



The longest side of the house faces west. How I love 

 it because of this! To my mind, every country house 

 is dull that does not face west, and have its principal 

 view that way. Modern civilisation forbids us to enjoy 

 the sunrise, but the varied effects of the sunset sky 

 glorify everything — the most commonplace gable or the 

 ugliest chimney-stack, a Scotch fir or an open field, which 

 assumes a green under an evening primrose sky that it 

 never has at any other time. The sky is like the sea for 

 its ever-changefulness. You may watch sunsets most 

 carefully every day in the year, and never wiU you see 

 twice exactly the same effect. How we all know, and 

 notice after midsummer, that marching south of the sun 

 at setting-time ! The old fellow in June sets right away 

 to the north, over the Common, changing groups of trees 

 and a little distant hiU to purple and blue. At the 

 autunan equinox he looks straight in at the windows as 

 he goes down between the stems of the two tall fir-trees. 

 Who, when forced to come in to dinner on a summer's 

 evening, does not appreciate a west dining-room with tall 

 panes of glass which give the power to measure the 

 gradations of the sky, from the deep grey-blue of night's 

 garments at the top, to the bright gold, streaked with 

 purple and crimson, at the base — the earth growing 

 mysteriously dark all the while, and the evening star 

 shining brighter every minute ? Architects tell you, and 

 men say, they prefer that a house should face south-east. 

 I do not at all agree with them ; the effects of evening to 

 me are too much to give up for any other advantage in the 

 world, real or imaginary. It is far easier to make some 

 other room into a breakfast-room, to catch the morning 

 sun in winter, than to change your dining-room in the 



