ly, like a
carpet. As for the crowd at the tables inside the Casino, it was
largely Semitic. On the road between Monte Carlo and Monaco, as
Browning says--

"It was noses, noses all the way."

Also it smelt distressingly: but that perhaps was its misfortune
rather than its fault. It did not seem very happy; nor was it
composed of people who looked as if they might have attained to
distinction, or even to ordinary usefulness, by following any other
pursuit. On the whole, one felt that it might as well be gathered
here as anywhere else.

"O that I were lying under the olives!" But since my own garden must
content me this year, let me conclude with a decent letter of thanks
to the friend who sent me, from Devonshire, a box of violet roots
that await the spring in a corner which even the waves of the equinox
cannot reach:--

TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME A BOX OF VIOLETS.

Nay, more than violets
These thoughts of thine, friend!
Rather thy reedy brook
--Taw's tributary--
At midnight murmuring,
Descried them, the delicate,
The dark-eyed goddesses.
There by his cressy beds
Dissolved and dreaming
Dreams that distilled in a dewdrop
All the purple of night,
All the shine of a planet.

Whereat he whispered;
And they arising
--Of day's forget-me-nots
The duskier sisters--
Descended, relinquished
The orchard, the trout-pool,
The Druid circles,
Sheepfolds of Dartmoor,
Granite and sandstone,
Torridge and Tamar;
By Roughtor, by Dozmare,
Down the vale of the Fowey
Moving in silence.
Brushing the nightshade
By bridges Cyclopean,
By Glynn, Lanhydrock,

Restormel, Lostwithiel,
Dark woodland, dim water,
dreaming town--
Down the vale of the Fowey,
Each in her exile
Musing the message--
Message illumined by love
As a starlit sorrow--
Passed, as the shadow of Ruth
From the land of the Moabite.
So they came--
Valley-born, valley-nurtured--
Came to the tideway,
The jetties, the anchorage,
The salt wind piping,
Snoring in equinox,
By ships at anchor,
By quays tormented,
Storm-bitten streets;
Came to the Haven
Crying, "Ah, shelter us,
The strayed ambassadors!
Lost legation of love
On a comfortless coast!"

Nay, but a little slee