our home, now. The young country that
is growing out of its swaddling clothes, and that we hope, and we know,
will one day be a Brighter Britain in deed and in truth.

CHAPTER IX.

OUR SHOW-PLACE.

We have a show-place, and one of which we are excessively proud. It is
not a castle, a baronial hall, or ruined abbey, as one would expect a
properly constituted show-place to be--at "home." In this new country,
it is needless to say, we have no antiquities of that sort. Yet this
place, of which we are so proud, and that it delights us to extol to
strangers, has a history that renders its singular picturesqueness
additionally striking.

Mere scenery is never so effective if it has no story to tell. There
must be something, be it fact or fiction, to attach to a place before
its beauties can be fully appreciated. The charm of poetry and romance
is a very real one, and can add much to one's enjoyment of a particular
view. I suppose that something is needed to interest and attract the
intelligence, at the same moment that the sense of sight is captivated,
so that a double result is produced.

Scotland is one fair example of this. Fine as the scenery there may be,
is it to be supposed that alone would attract such hordes of tourists
every summer? Certainly not; it is the history associated with each spot
that throws a glamour over it. Much magnificence of nature is passed by
unheeded in Scotland, because history or tradition has conferred a
higher title to regard upon some less picturesque place beyond. The
fiction and poetry of Scott, and of Burns and others in less degree,
have clothed the mountains and the glens with a splendid lustre, that
causes people to view their natural beauties through a mental magnifying
glass. Nature unadorned seldom gets the admiration bestowed on it that
it does when added to by art.

But why pursue this topic? Every one knows and feels the power that
associations have of rendering picturesque nature more picturesque
still. Therefore, a show-place, to be regarded as such in the true sense
of the word, must possess features of interest of another kind,
underlying the external loveliness of form and outline that merely
please and captivate the eye.

Here, in our Britain of the South Sea, we have abundance and variety of
the most glorious and splendid scenery. So far as wild nature is
concerned, there is nothing in Europe that we cannot match. Our Alps
might make Switzerland envious; o