e was, perhaps, the wealthiest in Europe. In the extreme north a
man might make out upon a clear day the bulk of Narbonne. Perpignan is
close by; the little rock harbour of Venus, Port Vendres, is to the
south. From the plain below one, which has always been crammed with
riches, sprang the chief influences of Southern Gaul. It was here that
the family of Charlemagne took its origin, and it was perhaps from here
that he saw, through the windows of a palace, that fleet of pirates
which moved him to his sad prophecy. That plain, moreover, will
re-arise; it is still rich, and all the Catalan province of Spain below
it, of which it is the highway and the approach, must increase in value
before Europe from year to year. The vast development of the French
African territory is reacting upon that coast: all it needs is a central
harbour, and if that harbour were formed it would do what Narbo did for
the Romans at the end of their occupation;--it would tap, much better
than does Cette, the wealth of Gascony, perhaps, also, an Atlantic
trade, and its exchanges towards Africa and the Levant. The
Mediterranean, which is perpetually increasing in wealth and in
importance to-day, would have a second Marseilles, and should such a
port arise--then, when our ships and our travellers are familiar with
it, the Canigou (if it cares for that sort of thing) will be as happy as
the Matterhorn. For the present it is all alone.

THE MAN AND HIS WOOD

I knew a man once that was a territorial magnate and had an estate in
the county of Berkshire. I will not conceal his name. It was William
Frederick Charles Hermann-Postlethwaite.

On his estate was a large family mansion, surrounded by tasteful gardens
of a charming old kind, and next outside these a great park, well
timbered. But the thing I am going to talk about was a certain wood of
which he was rightly very proud. It stood on the slope of a grass down,
just above the valley, and beneath it was a clean white road, and a
little way along that a town, part of which belonged to Mr.
Hermann-Postlethwaite, part to a local solicitor and moneylender,
several bits to a brewer in Reading, and a few houses to the
inhabitants. The people in the town were also fond of the wood, and
called it "The Old Wood." It was not very large, but, as I have said
before, it was very beautiful, and contained all manner of trees, but
especially beeches, under which nothing will grow--as the poet puts it
in Suss