A MOTOR-FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE
tain pines" ? It will have to travel a long way
to make itself heard!
Poor Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, so ma-
ligned for her imaginative pictures of Lovere and
Lake Iseo, may surely be forgiven for having
gilded the lily, for adding an extra touch of
romance where the romantic already so abound-
ed ; but it is less easy to explain how the poet of
the church of Brou could evoke out of the dusty
plain of the Bresse his pine-woods, streams and
mountains. Perhaps (the pilgrim reflects) the
explanation will be found within the church, and
standing in the magic light of the "vast western
window" we too shall hear the washing of the
wind in the pines, and understand why it travelled
so far to reach the poet's ear.
In this hope we enter; but only to discover
that inside also the archaeological mops have
been at work, and that the elaborate lining
of the shrine is as scoured and shiny as its ex-
terior. Well ! let us affront this last disenchant-
ment—and the little additional one of buying a
ticket for the choir from a gold-braided custodian
at a desk in the nave—and closing our eyes to the
secularised, museumised  aspect  of the monu-
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