It was, as good luck would have it, a rarely beautiful afternoon in October. The trees in the park were clothed in the golden russets of autumn. The sunlight was dancing upon the river running like a broad silver ribbon through the valley—a delicate blue mist threw an exquisitely diaphanous veil over the distance. Our friend, brought up in the fallacies of the French novelists of those days, lifted his hands in amazement and stood silent. It was my first sight of Richmond. I have travelled far and wide since then, and have seen many more startling scenes, but the haunting beauty of that autumn evening remains one of my happiest dreams. There is a mysterious charm in that landscape, with the oaks which were veterans when Henry the Eighth hunted the deer under their boughs, the lush grass, and the Thames, that sacred river, for an Eton boy without its peer in the world. It is a scene which neither Alps nor Rockies, neither the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, nor the Great Wall of China, nor the wonders of the tropical jungle, can efface. And—it is home. Some thirty years ago when, as I have said, autumn was still the welcome herald of sport, I, happily inspired, laid the foundation of what to-day robs it of some of its sadness. Now that the stalls in my stable are empty and the guns lie idle in the racks of the gun-room, I reap the reward. I sent to America for acorns, I bought seed of the giant Japanese vine (_Vini coignettia_) in Tokio. From Veitch (alas! for the death of a noble firm!) I procured specimens of all the species and varieties of Japanese maples: Thunberg’s berberis, the Persian parrottia—these, with the various forms of rhus and other choice plants, make up a palette of colours to cheer the dool of the dying year. In October one after another the maples begin to send up tongues of fire, setting the hill-side in flames. It is a rare treat to see the sun shining through the leaves of some trees red as the pigeon’s-blood ruby; rare to see the fretted lace-work of others clothing them in a gorgeous panoply of old gold. Their neighbours are gleaming like the jewels in Oriental fable. The hollies and thorns and taller trees are draped with flamboyant curtains sent down by the huge vines—red, yellow, tawny orange, festoons falling in a riotous feast of colour. Among all these proud foreigners the more modest yet no less beautiful native spindle-tree suffers no eclipse. A little later the American oaks begin to assert themselves. These, a little while before they turn crimson, assume all the quality of an old Chinese bronze which the patina of time has painted with the many hues of Joseph’s coat mysteriously blended together in an exquisite harmony. When we watch all these, we understand the poetry of the Japanese when they talk of their mountains and forests clothed in the brocade of the maples.