there among furze and heath, crop out great pink bunches of the _Daphne Cneorum_ of our gardens, perfuming all the air. Yes, we are indeed in foreign parts, in the very home of that Atlantic flora, of which only a few species have reached the south-west of these isles; and on the limit of another flora also—of that of Italy and Greece. For as we descend into the glen, every lane-bank and low tree is entwined, not with ivy, but with a still more beautiful evergreen, the Smilax of South-eastern Europe, with its zigzag stems, and curving heart-shaped leaves, and hooked thorns; the very oak-scrub is of species unknown to Britain. And what are these tall lilies, which fill every glade breast-high with their sword-like leaves, and spires of white flowers, lilac-pencilled? They are the classic flower, the Asphodel of Greece and Grecian song; the Asphodel through which the ghosts of Homer’s heroes strode: as heroes’ ghosts might stride even here. For here we are on sacred ground. The vegetation is rank with the blood of gallant invaders, and of no less gallant patriots. In the words of Campbell’s ‘Hohenlinden’— ‘Every turf beneath our feet May be a hero’s sepulchre.’ That little tarn below has ‘bubbled with crimson foam’ when the kings of Europe arose to bring home the Bourbons, as did the Lake Regillus of old, in the day when ‘the Thirty Cities swore to bring the Tarquins home.’ Turn to the left, above the tarn, and into the great Spanish road from Bayonne to the frontier at what was lately ‘La Negresse,’ but is now a gay railway station. Where that station is, was another tarn, now drained. The road ran between the two. And that narrow space of two hundred yards, on which we stand, was for three fearful days the gate of France. For on the 10th of December, 1813, Soult, driven into Bayonne by Wellington’s advance, rushed out again in the early morn, and poured a torrent of living men down this road, and upwards again towards the British army which crested that long ridge in front. The ridge slopes rapidly away at the back, toward the lowlands of the Bidassoa; and once thrust from it, the English army would have been cut in two—one half driven back upon their sea-base at St. Jean de Luz: the other half left on the further side of the Adour. And this was the gate, which had to be defended during a three days’ battle. That long copse which overhangs the road is the famous wood, which was taken and retaken many times. You house above it, embowered in trees, is the ‘Mayor’s house,’ in which Sir John Hope was so nearly captured by the French. Somewhere behind the lane where we came down was the battery which blasted off our troops as they ran up from the lowlands behind, to support their fellows. Of the details of the fight you must read in Napier’s ‘Peninsular War,’ and in Mr. Gleig’s ‘Subaltern.’ They are not to be described by one who never saw a battle, great or small.