s revealed
again, reflected perhaps in the waters of some stream or amid the reeds
and sedges of a mere, where a punt is moored containing anglers in broad
wideawake hats. Gradually a dark purple shade steals over the long range
of chalk hills; white, clean-looking roads stand out clearly defined
miles away on the horizon; the smoke that rises straight up from some
ivy-covered homestead half a mile away is bluer than the evening sky--a
deep azure blue. The horizon is clear in the south, but in the
north-west dark, but not forbidding clouds are rising; fantastic
cloudlets float high up in the firmament; rooks coming home to roost are
plainly visible several miles away against the brilliant western sky.

This Great Western Railway runs through some of the finest bits of old
England. Not long ago, in travelling from Chepstow to Gloucester, we
were fairly amazed at the surpassing beauty of the views. It was
May-day, and the weather was in keeping with the occasion. The sight of
the old town of Chepstow and the silvery Wye, as we left them behind us,
was fine enough; but who can describe the magnificent panorama presented
by the wide Severn at low tide? Yellow sands, glittering like gold in
the dazzling sunshine, stretched away for miles; beyond these a vista of
green meadows, with the distant Cotswold Hills rising out of dreamy
haze; waters of chrysolite, with fields of malachite beyond; the azure
sky overhead flecked with clouds of pearl and opal, and all around the
pear orchards in full bloom.

While on the subject of scenery, may I enter a protest against the
change the Great Western Railway has lately made in the photographs
which adorn their carriages? They used to be as beautiful as one could
wish; lately, however, the colouring has been lavished on them with no
sparing hand. These "photo-chromes" are unnatural and impossible,
whereas the old permanent photographs were very beautiful.

At Kemble, with its old manor house and stone-roofed cottages, we say
good-bye to the Vale of White Horse; for we have entered the Cotswolds.
Stretching from Broadway to Bath, and from Birdlip to Burford, and
containing about three hundred square miles, is a vast tract of hill
country, intersected by numerous narrow valleys. Probably at one period
this district was a rough, uncultivated moor. It is now cultivated for
the most part, and grows excellent barley. The highest point of this
extensive range is eleven hundred and thirty-four