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CHAPTER XII.
We have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France.
What a bewitching land it is! What a garden! Surely the leagues of
bright green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their
grasses trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped and
measured and their symmetry preserved by the most architectural of
gardeners. Surely the long straight rows of stately poplars that divide the
beautiful landscape like the squares of a checker-board are set with line
and plummet, and their uniform height determined with a spirit level.
Surely the straight, smooth, pure white turnpikes are jack-planed and
sandpapered every day. How else are these marvels of symmetry,
cleanliness, and order attained? It is wonderful. There are no
unsightly stone walls and never a fence of any kind. There is no dirt,
no decay, no rubbish anywhere--nothing that even hints at untidiness
--nothing that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly and beautiful--every
thing is charming to the eye.
We had such glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between its grassy banks;
of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery; of quaint old red-tiled
villages with mossy medieval cathedrals looming out of their midst; of
wooded hills with ivy-grown towers and turrets of feudal castles
projecting above the foliage; such glimpses of Paradise, it seemed to us,
such visions of fabled fairyland!
We knew then what the poet meant when he sang of: "--thy cornfields
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