eyards and corn-fields
and well-kept park-like grounds, with such timber in them as
filled me with delight, for I do love a good tree. There it
stands so strong and sturdy, and yet so beautiful, a very type
of the best sort of man. How proudly it lifts its bare head
to the winter storms, and with what a full heart it rejoices
when the spring has come again! How grand its voice is, too,
when it talks with the wind: a thousand aeolian harps cannot
equal the beauty of the sighing of a great tree in leaf. All
day it points to the sunshine and all night to the stars, and
thus passionless, and yet full of life, it endures through the
centuries, come storm, come shine, drawing its sustenance from
the cool bosom of its mother earth, and as the slow years roll
by, learning the great mysteries of growth and of decay. And
so on and on through generations, outliving individuals, customs,
dynasties -- all save the landscape it adorns and human nature
-- till the appointed day when the wind wins the long battle
and rejoices over a reclaimed space, or decay puts the last stroke
to his fungus-fingered work.

Ah, one should always think twice before one cuts down a tree!

In the evenings it was customary for Sir Henry, Good, and myself
to dine, or rather sup, with their Majesties -- not every night,
indeed, but about three or four times a week, whenever they had
not much company, or the affairs of state would allow of it.
And I am bound to say that those little suppers were quite the
most charming things of their sort that I ever had to do with.
How true is the saying that the very highest in rank are always
the most simple and kindly. It is from your half-and-half sort
of people that you get pomposity and vulgarity, the difference
between the two being very much what one sees every day in
England between the old, out-at-elbows, broken-down county family,
and the overbearing, purse-proud people who come and 'take the
place'. I really think that Nyleptha's greatest charm is her
sweet simplicity, and her kindly genuine interest even in little
things. She is the simplest woman I ever knew, and where her
passions are not involved, one of the sweetest; but she can look
queenly enough when she likes, and be as fierce as any savage too.

For instance, never shall I forget that scene when I for the
first time was sure that she was really in love with Curtis.
It came about in this way -- all through Good's weakness for
ladies' soci