But to me life on the Riviera soon becomes tiresome. A couple or three visits to "the Rooms;" a "five o'clock" or two at La Reserve; tea in a wicker chair in the entrance-hall of that colossal hotel, the Excelsior, at Cimiez, which is patronised by Her Majesty; a dinner at the London House at Nice, and one at the Hermitage at "Monty," and I become tired of the ever-azure sea, of the Noah's Ark gardens, of the artificiality and of the constant brightness of the Riviera "season." I long for my old English home in the country where, in the springtime, all the beauties of the outdoor world come to one with a sense of novelty after the winter's cold and frost. Therefore at the end of March I returned, passing through London, and travelling down to my father's place at Tixover, which was, as always, my pleasant home. What though the trees were still leafless, and the flowers few; every day, almost every hour, fresh green buds were swelling and opening in the balmy air; the delicate pink of the almond blossom was flushing the bare twigs in the kitchen-garden, primroses were coyly showing themselves in the coppices and hedgerows, as I drove along from Stamford, while in the sheltered places in the woods as I passed I saw sheets of wild hyacinths, "like strips of the sky fallen," delicate snowdrops, and a wealth of daffodils. As I drove along that morning through Worthorpe and Colly Weston to Duddington, the quaint little old Northamptonshire village within a mile of which lies Tixover Hall, it was, though a trifle chilly after the Riviera, one of those bright days which make even the elderly feel young and sprightly again; days on which even the saddest among us are influenced by the infectious brightness of the atmosphere. At no other season of the year is there that delicious sensation of life, of resurrection in the very air, as the grey old earth awakens from her winter sleep and renews her youth again.