ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE ii 



have acquired, and look at the bees with our own eyes. An 

 hour spent in the midst of the apiary will be less instructive 

 perhaps, but the things we shall see will be infinitely more 

 stimulating and more actual. 



I have not yet forgotten the first apiary I saw, where I 

 learned to love the bees. It was many years ago in a large 

 village of Dutch Flanders, the sweet and pleasant country 

 whose love for brilliant colour rivals that of Zealand even, 

 the concave mirror of Holland ; a country that gladly spreads 

 out before us, as so many pretty, thoughtful toys, her illumi- 

 nated gables and waggons and towers ; her cupboards and 

 clocks that gleam at the end of the passage ; her little trees 

 marshalled in line along quays and canal-banks, waiting, one 

 almost might think, for some quiet, beneficent ceremony ; 

 her boats and her barges with sculptured poops, her flower- 

 like doors and windows, immaculate dams, and elaborate, 

 many-coloured drawbridges ; and her little varnished houses, 

 bright as new pottery, from which bell-shaped dames come 

 forth, all a-glitter with silver and gold, to milk the cows in the 

 white-hedged fields, or spread the linen on flowery lawns, cut 

 into patterns of oval and lozenge, and most astoundingly green. 



To this spot, where life would seem more restricted than 

 elsewhere — if it be possible for life indeed to become restricted 

 — a sort of aged philosopher had retired, an old man somewhat 

 akin to Virgil's — 



" Man equal to kings, and approaching the gods ; " 



whereto Lafontaine might have added — 



" And, like the gods, content and at rest." 



