French African territory is reacting upon that coast:  all it needs is a central harbour, and if that harbour were formed it would do what Narbo did for the Romans at the end of their occupation;—­it would tap, much better than does Cette, the wealth of Gascony, perhaps, also, an Atlantic trade, and its exchanges towards Africa and the Levant.  The Mediterranean, which is perpetually increasing in wealth and in importance to-day, would have a second Marseilles, and should such a port arise—­then, when our ships and our travellers are familiar with it, the Canigou (if it cares for that sort of thing) will be as happy as the Matterhorn.  For the present it is all alone.

THE MAN AND HIS WOOD

I knew a man once that was a territorial magnate and had an estate in the county of Berkshire.  I will not conceal his name.  It was William Frederick Charles Hermann-Postlethwaite.

On his estate was a large family mansion, surrounded by tasteful gardens of a charming old kind, and next outside these a great park, well timbered.  But the thing I am going to talk about was a certain wood of which he was rightly very proud.  It stood on the slope of a grass down, just above the valley, and beneath it was a clean white road, and a little way along that a town, part of which belonged to Mr. Hermann-Postlethwaite, part to a local solicitor and moneylender, several bits to a brewer in Reading, and a few houses to the inhabitants.  The people in the town were also fond of the wood, and called it “The Old Wood.”  It was not very large, but, as I have said before, it was very beautiful, and contained all manner of trees, but especially beeches, under which nothing will grow—­as the poet puts it in Sussex: 

     Unner t’ beech and t’ yow Nowt ’ll grow.

Well, as years passed, Mr. Hermann-Postlethwaite became fonder and fonder of the wood.  He began towards 1885 to think it the nicest thing on his estate—­which it was; and he would often ride out to look at it of a morning on his grey mare “Betsy.”  When he rode out like this of a morning his mount was well groomed, and so was he, however early it might be, and he would carry a little cane to hit the mare with and also as a symbol of authority.  The people who met him would touch their foreheads, and he would wave his hand genially in reply.  He was a good fellow.  But the principal thing about him was his care for the old wood; and when he rode out to look at it, as I say, he would speak to any one around so early—­his bailiff, as might be, or sometimes his agent, or even the foreman of the workshop or the carpenter, or any hedger or ditcher that might be there, and point out bits of the wood, and say, “That branch looks pretty dicky.  No harm to cut that off short and parcel and serve the end and cap it with a zinc cap;” or, “Better be cutting the Yartle Bush for the next fallow, it chokes the gammon-rings, and I don’t like to see so much standard ivy about, it’s the death of trees.”  I am not sure that I have got the technical words right, but at any rate they were more or less like that, for I have heard him myself time and again.  I often used to go out with him on another horse, called Sultan, which he lent me to ride upon.