In the glades rose innumerable spears of purple half-opened bluebells; the eye ranged over an anemone-dotted sward in this direction; over clusters of smalt-blue dog violets in another.

Ladies'-smocks and cowslips made every meadow delicious; and the banks of the lowland streams were gorgeously gilded with king-cups.

The mountains on fine days were blue and purple in the far distance; pale green and grey in the foreground.

Under the April showers and sun-shafts they became tragic, enchanted, horrific, paradisiac.

Even the mining towns were bearable--in the spring sunshine.