It was admitted with regret by Darwin that he ceased in middle age to care for poetry and art, though there seems to be no doubt that he mistook fatigue and preoccupation of mind for a real change in taste and power of appreciation. It is interesting to place beside this the case of the great literary artist, Tolstoi, who not only frankly confesses that he refuses to be guided by reason and follows sentiment, but is also profoundly ignorant upon all the most ordinary topics of human life outside his own village, and of all Nature and her workings. Would Tolstoi have been a greater or a smaller artist if he had had a larger knowledge of the things that are? Was Darwin’s great scientific achievement really related to an innate indifference to what is called “poetry”? I will not now discuss the matter, but I am convinced that so far as natural gift is concerned, the keenest scientific capacity is not only compatible with the fullest sensibility to art and with the power of poetical vision and expression, but is often accompanied by them; and, further, that the work of an artist, if he is a great artist, cannot be hampered by knowledge. It is only the small talent or the feeble genius that can be paralysed rather than developed by the fullest experience and the widest knowledge. Necessary incompatibility of mental qualities has no place in this matter; what has led to the erroneous assumption that it has, is the excessive exercise by exceptional individuals of certain powers—a specialism necessary for effort and success, but deliberately chosen, and not due to an inborn one-sidedness. VII THE LAND OF AZURE BLUE The Côte d’Azur whither many of my readers will be travelling—in thought, if not in reality—about Easter time, is well named the Land of Azure Blue, for it is the blueness of the sea, of the sky, and of the distant rocks and mountains, as well as much of the vegetation, which is when the sun shines, its special charm. And although one has some wet and some cloudy days, yet the sun does shine there with a strength and brilliancy not to be enjoyed in the early part of the year on the Atlantic and North Sea coast. This tract of country, more commonly known to English people as the Riviera, has very special meteorological conditions owing to its position as the narrow strip of shore-line existing between the vast mass of the Western Alps and the Mediterranean Sea. It is warmed by the sea, and lies too close under the mountains to be caught by any winds from the north, and at many points is also effectively protected from both east and west winds by rocky spurs of the great mountain chain.