ch mood becomes it best. The fuchsias
grow against our walls and tap at our window-panes in the morning as
though they were roses; they even make their homes in the rocks, like
the conies. The island is a very garden of fuchsias, tall as trees; and
there are no other trees. The 'Welcome' itself is a sort of farmhouse
without the farm; there is a goat or two and a donkey to be seen about
it, which would account for the milk having an alien flavour, if it had
one. But the 'Welcome' has excellent milk, so that there must be some
cows somewhere. From the cliff-top you may see Alderney, for our inn is
among the Channel Islands. When a storm comes you must stop where you
are; for until the last waves of it have ceased there is no approach to
us from the world without. To the stranger it seems probable at such
seasons that the little place will burst up from below, for beneath it
are caverns innumerable, filled with furious waves like sea monsters
roaring for our lives. The sea, in short, has honeycombed it, and
renews her vows to be its ruin with every gale. Yet the 'Welcome' lasts
our time, and will last that of many generations, who will continue,
however, doubtless to believe that the sublimities of Nature are
unattainable short of Switzerland.

My memory now transports me to a mountain district in the north, but on
this side of the border; and here, again, the inn is signless, and has
no appearance of an inn at all. It is situated on the last of a great
chain of hills, with lakes among them. It has lawns and shrubberies,
but few flowers; Nature frowns on every hand, even in sunshine, when
the waterfalls flow like silver, and the crags are decked with diamonds.
There are no 'trencher-scraping, napkin-carrying,' waiters in the house,
but country damsels attend upon you, and a motherly dame, their mistress,
expresses her hope every morning that you have slept well. If you have
not, it is the fault of your conscience: you have had a poet's recipe
for it, for you have been 'within the hearing of a hundred streams'
all night. Will you go up the Fells, or will you row on the Lake?
These are your simple alternatives; there is no brass band, no
promenade, no pier, no anything that the vulgar like. Yet once a week
at least a great spectacle can be promised you without crossing the
inn threshold (indeed, when the promise is kept it is better to be on
the right side of it)--a thunder-storm among the hills. The arrangements
for lighti