sending gleams of golden light far into the woods, and waking up all nature to life and activity. Birds chirp and flutter about, parrots scream, monkeys chatter, bees hum among the flowers, and gorgeous butterflies flutter lazily along or sit with full expanded wings exposed to the warm and invigorating rays. The first hour of · morning in the equatorial regions possesses a charm and a beauty that can never be forgotten. All nature seems refreshed and strengthened by the coolness and moisture of the past night, new leaves and buds unfold almost before the eye, and fresh shoots may often be observed to have grown many inches since the preceding day. The temperature is the most delicious conceivable. The slight chill of early dawn, which was itself agreeable, is succeeded by an invigorating warmth; and the intense sunshine lights up the glorious vegetation of the tropics, and realises all that the magic art of the

painter or the glowing words of the poet have pictured as their ideals of terrestrial beauty."

Or take Dean Stanley's description of the colossal statues of Amenophis III., the Memnon of the Greeks, at Thebes"The sun was setting, the African range glowed red behind them; the green plain was dyed with a deeper green beneath them, and the shades of evening veiled the vast rents and fissures in their aged frames. As I looked back at them in the sunset, and they rose up in front of the background of the mountain, they seemed, indeed, as if they were part of it,—as if they belonged to some natural creation.

But I must not indulge myself in more quotations, though it is difficult to stop. Such extracts recall the memory of many glorious days: for the advantages of travels last through life; and often, as we sit at home, some bright and perfect view of Venice, of Genoa, or of Monte Rosa

comes back on you, as full of repose as a day wisely spent in travel."1

So far is a thorough love and enjoyment of travel from interfering with the love of home, that perhaps no one can thoroughly enjoy his home who does not sometimes wander away. They are like exertion and rest, each the complement of the other; so that, though it may seem paradoxical, one of the greatest pleasures of travel is the return; and no one who has not roamed abroad, can realise the devotion which the wanderer feels for Domiduca―the sweet and gentle goddess who watches over our coming home.

1 Helps.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PLEASURES OF HOME

"There's no place like Home."-Old English Song.

It may well be doubted which is more delightful,—to start for a holiday which has been fully earned, or to return home from one which has been thoroughly enjoyed; to find oneself, with renewed vigour, with a fresh store of memories and ideas, back once more by one's own fireside, with one's family, friends, and books.

"To sit at home," says Leigh Hunt, with an old folio (?) book of romantic yet credible voyages and travels to read,

an old bearded traveller for its hero, a fireside in an old country house to read it by, curtains drawn, and just wind enough stirring out of doors to make an accompaniment to the billows or forests we are reading of this surely is one of the perfect moments of existence."

It is no doubt a great privilege to visit foreign countries; to travel say in Mexico or Peru, or to cruise among the Pacific Islands; but in some respects the narratives of early travellers, the histories of Prescott or the voyages of Captain Cook, are even more interesting; describing to us, as they do, a state of society which was then so unlike ours, but which has now been much changed and Europeanised.

Thus we may make our daily travels interesting, even though, like those of the Vicar of Wakefield, all our adventures are by our own fireside, and all our migrations from one room to another.