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Updated: May 20, 2025
On the other side a grove of myrtles, intermixed with roses and flowering shrubs, led into shady mazes; in the midst of which appeared the glittering tops of elegant pavilions, some of which stood on the brink of the river, others had wide avenues leading through the groves, and others were almost hidden from sight by intervening woods.
Looe stands at the mouth of a valley, at the bottom of which runs a stream. It consists of East and West Looe romantic foreign-looking places. The houses are grouped together irregularly, with whitewashed walls, stairs outside, green roofs and grey gables, with myrtles, geraniums, and other plants of a warm climate flourishing in their midst.
Botanists tell us that they are, or rather may have been in old times, akin to myrtles. If so, they have taken a grand and original line of their own, and persevered in it for ages, till they have specialised themselves to a condition far in advance of most myrtles, in size, beauty, and use. They may be known from all other trees by one mark their large handsome flowers.
The air has made me sleep more soundly than I have done for some time, and I dare say it will do me a great deal of good in every way. You may suppose what a southern climate this is, when I tell you that myrtles and verbena, three or four feet high, and hydrangeas are in flower in the gardens even in ours, which is about a hundred and fifty yards from the sea.
Here and there the drooping bamboos dipped their feathery branches into the water, frequently covered to their very tops with purple convolvuli; yellow bignonias carried their golden clusters to the very summit of the more lofty trees; while white flowering myrtles and orange-coloured mallows bordered the channel.
Wherever these flowers flourished very luxuriantly there were single trees of stunted growth and thick bark, which seldom rose above fifteen or twenty feet. Besides these there were rich flowering myrtles, and here and there a grotesque cactus or two. Under one of these trees they reined up after a ride of two hours, and piqueting their horses, prepared breakfast.
And they lead him to a place full of rivers, surrounded by eight hundred kinds of roses and myrtles. Each one has a canopy according to his merits, and under it flow four rivers, one of milk, the other of balsam, the third of wine, and the fourth of honey. Every canopy is overgrown by a vine of gold, and thirty pearls hang from it, each of them shining like Venus.
Here were thriving orange and fig-trees mingled with glistening, dark-leaved myrtles, which were bordered by an edging of box so high and stout of limb that the main stems were more like trees than shrubs. The guide told us they were centuries old.
As the day had closed long before the dinner had disappeared, the boys could only hear all there was to be heard to-night, about any alterations or improvements which had taken place since their absence; what success their sisters had met with, in keeping up their stock of rabbits and poultry; whether the ice-house had been yet filled; how went on old Neddy the donkey, if he was yet too old to be ridden; whether the myrtles were alive, and their own gardens had been full of flowers; and a variety of other inquiries, extremely interesting to them, and which would have doubtless been made by many of my young readers on similar occasions as those on which we are writing.
Leam was the kind of girl to love madly under the orange trees and myrtles, to break one's heart for when brothers interposed in the moonlight with rapiers and daggers and caught her away for conventual discipline or for marriage with the don; but as the mistress of an English home, the every-day wife of an English squire with a character to keep up and an example to set, was she fit for that?
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