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dry branches and dry leaves have their charm
for me. What a fine thing it is to see and hear
the jswirl of dry leaves in a grove when the
warm breezes come to play with them ! And
how delightful to hear on a hot day in April
the pattering of rain-drops on dry leaves as a
prelude to the coming storm I"
Such passages show what he had been doing
with his mind all his life, and how observation
and love of Nature and refined sympathy and
sentiment formed the essential part of his life.
Ever eager to catch the spirit of a bygone age,
his fancy was sometimes chasing impalpable de-
lights even when his thoughts might have been
busy with the prosaic facts of life. The thought of
a Grecian statue or a marble column could take him
at once into the heart of Hellenic life, and fancy
pictures of Gothic castles and cathedrals could
bring back to him the age of Faith and Chivalry.
Even in the midst of his judicial and political work,
he was not too busy to capture the delight of a
fanciful idea. 'HILLFORT/ as,,, he tells us, owed
its origin to one of them. " I have been under
the spell of Scott since my boyhood. The castles
and halls and abbeys described by him have fur-
nished pictures for me, and the words in which
some of these pictures are painted often come back
to me. In 1923, when I decided, to build a house
on the hill adjoining the Black Rock (Naubat
Pahar), the style of architecture was the first im-
portant thing to decide, because the site demanded
a picturesque and imposing form with some
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