the proffered emblems of the flower town, or fail to earn the parting wish "Felice ritorno!" One point may be granted; in Italy and elsewhere the common people do not highly or permanently value scentless flowers. A flower without fragrance is to them almost a dead flower. I put the question to a troop of English children coming from a wood laden with spoils, "What makes you like primroses?" "The scent of them," was the answer. A little further along the lane came another troop, and the question was repeated. This time the answer was, "Because they smell so nice." No flower has been more widely reverenced than the unassuming sweet basil, the _Basilica odorato_ of Sicilian songs, the Tulasi plant of India, where it is well-nigh worshipped in the house of every pious Hindu. The scale is graduated thus: the flower which has no smell is plucked in play, but left remorselessly to wither as children leave their daisy chains; the flower which has a purely sweet and fresh perfume is arranged in nosegays, set in water, praised and enjoyed for the day; the flower which has a scent of spice and incense and aromatic gums bears off honours scarcely less than divine. The folk-poet sings because heaven has given him a sweet voice and a fair mistress; because the earth brings forth her increase and the sun shines, and the spring comes back, and rest at noontide and at evening is lovely, and work in the oil-mill and in the vineyard is lovely too: he sings to embellish his labour and to enhance his repose. He lives on the shield of Achilles, singing, accompanied by a viol, to the grape-pickers; he is crowned with flowers in the golden age of Lucretius as he raises his sweet song at the _festa_. We have seen a little of what he says about Nature, but, in truth, he is still her interpreter when he says nothing. All folk-poesy is sung and folk-songs are as much one of Nature's voices as the song of the birds, the song of the brooks, the song of the wind in the pine-tops. So it is likewise with the rude musical instruments which the exigencies of his life have taught the peasant how to make; they utter tones more closely in harmony with nature than those of the finest Stradivarius. The Greeks were right when they made Pan with his reed-pipe rather than Apollo with his lyre the typical Nature-god. Anyone to whom it has chanced to hear a folk-song sung in its own home will understand what is meant. You may travel a good deal and not have that chance. The songs, the customs, the traditions of the people form an arcanum of which they are not always ready to lift the veil. To those, of course, whose lives are cast among a people that still sings, the opportunity comes oftener. But if the song be sung consciously for your pleasure its soul will hardly remain in it. I shall always vividly remember two occasions of hearing a folk-song sung. Once, long ago, on the Bidassoa. The day was closing in; the bell was tolling in the little chapel on the heathery mountain-side,