arcely to be seen at
all now, as the lazy Berkshire people have neglected their duty. He
really must be scoured again this summer; he is a national institution.
Londoners take a much greater interest in him than do the honest folk
who live bang under his nose.

We must continue our excavations at Ladbarrow copse yonder. Men say it
is the largest barrow in the county, full of "golden coffins" and all
sorts of priceless antiquities! At present all we have discovered are
some bones, with which we stuffed our pockets. When we arrived home,
however, they were found to have belonged to a poor old sheep-dog that
was buried there. But see! the setting sun is tinging the tops of the
slender, shapely ash trees in yonder emerald copse. The whole plain is
changing from a vast arena of golden splendour to a mysterious shadowy
land of dreams. A fierce light still reveals every object on the hill
towards the east; but westwards beneath yon purple ridge all is wrapped
in dim, ambiguous shade.

It is sad to think that I alone of mortal men should be here to see this
glorious panorama. It seems such a waste of nature's bounteous store
that night after night this wondrous spectacle should be solemnly
displayed, with no better gallery than a stray shepherd, who, as he
"homeward plods his weary way," cares little for the grand drama that is
being performed entirely for his benefit. Nature is indeed prodigal of
her charms in out-of-the-way country places.

Sometimes whilst walking over these remote fields on summer evenings, I
have stopped to ask myself this question: Is it possible that these
exquisite wild flowers, these groves and dells of verdant tracery, these
birds with their priceless music, and these wondrous, ineffable effects
of light and shade which form part of the everyday pageant of English
rural scenery are doomed "to waste their sweetness on the desert air"?
Is it possible (to go further afield) that those lovely scenes in
Wales--the fairy glens near Bettws-y-Coed, or the luxuriant valleys of
Carmarthen, further south, where silvery Towey flows below the stately
ruins of Dynevor Castle; those romantic reaches on the Wye, from
Chepstow to the frowning hills of Brecon; those solitary, but
unspeakably grand, mountains and passes of the Highlands, such as
Glencoe, Ben Nevis, or those of the scarcely explored Hebrides; those
smiling waters of the lovely Trossachs; those countless spots in the
"Emerald Isle" that the tourist has