Approach a typical French village of a modern type. The first impression given by the houses is of a vastly superior artistic consciousness. Both in colour and in form the houses are more beautiful than the same types in England, where domestic architecture of the villa type so often suggests either a penal establishment or the need of a penal establishment for the designer. But look a little closer, and one notices that, as compared with an English town, there is in France a conspicuous absence of gardens. Decorative trees, shrubberies, flowers are rare. Where there is garden space it is, as like as not, devoted to some shocking attempt at grandiose _rococo_ work. The interiors, too, are disappointing. Thrift suggests the hideous closed-in stove as a substitute for open fires; but the garish wall-papers, the coloured prints, the "decorations" of shell-work or china, and so on, are not necessary, and are far more ugly than those of the average poor home in England, even of the "Early Victorian type." I repeat, the natural artistic standard of the French does not seem to be so high as that of the English, but the standard of artistic education is very much higher. [Illustration: A KENT MANOR-HOUSE AND GARDEN] I have noticed among all classes in England the same natural love of beauty. It does not exist only in the rich (but as a class it exists among them to a very marked degree: there is nothing in the world more beautiful than an English manor house, with its park and garden); it permeates the whole people. I recall a farmer to whom I spoke of the waste caused by the gorgeous yellow-blossomed weeds which invaded his wheat. "Yes," he said, half content, half sorry, "but they do look so beautiful." It was not that he was a lazy farmer, but he did actually love the beautiful wild life which came to rob his wheat of its nourishment. At another time I remember meeting on a country road a draper's porter (one of those poor casual labourers who make an odd penny here and there by carrying parcels for small drapers). He had an enforced holiday and he was tramping out into the country from the town "to see the green fields." He did not say in so many words that he "loved" the green fields. It would not occur to him probably to attempt to phrase his feeling towards them. But it was clear that he did, most fondly; and he was fairly typical of the Englishman of his class. As an exile the Englishman carries away with him the ideal of the soft green English country-side, and tries to reconstruct England wherever he may settle overseas. English trees, English grass, English flowers he sedulously cultivates in Australia, in Canada, in South Africa, and wins some strange triumphs over Nature in many of his acclimatisations.