elling, the four gates to this
delightful city. For it is delightful, once your 'prentice days are
past. In a way it is like a cold bath on a winter's morning, and you
glow all day. In a way it is like football, as the nimble aggravation
dances to and fro. In a way it is like chess. Indeed, all games of skill
are watered quarrels, quarrel and soda, come to see them in a proper
light. And without quarrelling you have not fully appreciated your
fellow-man. For in the ultimate it is the train and complement of Love,
the shadow that rounds off the delight we take in poor humanity. It is
the vinegar and pepper of existence, and long after our taste for sweets
has vanished it will be the solace of our declining years.

THE AMATEUR NATURE-LOVER

It is possible that an education entirely urban is not the best
conceivable preparation for descriptive articles upon the country. On
the other hand, your professional nature-lover is sometimes a little
over-familiar with his subject. He knows the names of all the things,
and he does not spare you. Besides, he is subtle. The prominent features
are too familiar to him, and he goes into details. What respectable
townsman, for instance, knows what "scabiosa" is? It sounds very
unpleasant. Then the professional nature-lover assumes that you know
trees. No Englishman can tell any tree from any other tree, except a
very palpable oak or poplar. So that we may at least, as an experiment,
allow a good Londoner to take his unsophisticated eyes out into the
sweet country for once, and try his skill at nature-loving, though his
botany has been learned over the counter of flower-shops, and his
zoology on Saturday afternoons when they have the band in the Gardens.
He makes his way, then, over by Epsom Downs towards Sutton, trying to
assimilate his mood to the proper flavour of appreciation as he goes,
and with a little notebook in the palm of his hand to assist an
ill-trained memory. And the burthen of his song is of course the autumn
tints.

The masses of trees towards Epsom and Ewell, with the red houses and
Elizabethan facades peeping through their interstices, contain, it would
seem, every conceivable colour, except perhaps sky-blue; there are
brilliant yellow trees, and a kind of tree of the most amazing gamboge
green, almost the green of spring come back, and tan-coloured trees,
deep brown, red, and deep crimson trees. Here and there the wind has
left its mark, and the grey-brown br