The modern idea of a wood is a graveled chess-board on a large
scale, flooded at night with gas: the modern idea of a ruin is a
dancing-floor, with a few patched arches and walls lifted between
the wind and our nobility. We shave the weeds away and produce a fine
English turf: we root up the brambles and eglantines which might tear
the skirts of the ladies. Our lovers, our poets and romancers must fly
to distant glades if they would not walk in the shade of trees that
have been transplanted.

I was considering the sorry triumph of the stage-machinists of
Baden-Baden, when Berkley, who had disappeared, came in sight again.
Our dinner, he said, was ready--ready in the guards' hall. I retreated
with a sudden cry of alarm. I had rather dine at the hotel; I had
rather not dine at all; I was not in the least hungry. It was the
emptiness of my pocket that caused this sudden fullness, of the
stomach. Berkley made light of my objections.

"Listen! You can hear from this mountain the dinner-bells of the city.
We should arrive too late. Although you hate restored castles, you
need not refuse to dine with me in one."

[Illustration: TYROLEAN.]

The noble hall was a scene of vulgar festivity, where the ubiquitous
kellner, racing to and fro with beer and plates of sausage, solved the
problem of perpetual motion. It was not easy, in such circumstances,
to maintain the flow of poetic association, but I accomplished the
feat in a measure. As the shades of evening closed around the hill,
and the bells of twenty dining-tables ascended to us through the