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Title: The Open Air

Author: Richard Jefferies

Release Date: November, 2004  [EBook #6981]
[This file was first posted on February 19, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: iso-8859-1

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE OPEN AIR ***




Malcolm Farmer, Juliet Sutherland, Tom Allen, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team



THE OPEN AIR



RICHARD JEFFERIES





NOTE 

For permission to collect these papers my thanks are due to the
Editors of the following publications: _The Standard_, _English
Illustrated Magazine_, _Longman's Magazine_, _St. James's Gazette_,
_Chambers's Journal_, _Manchester Guardian_, _Good Words_, and _Pall Mall
Gazette_.
                        R.J.





CONTENTS


SAINT GUIDO

GOLDEN-BROWN

WILD FLOWERS

SUNNY BRIGHTON

THE PINE WOOD

NATURE ON THE ROOF

ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS

THE MODERN THAMES

THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN

THE HAUNT OF THE HARE

THE BATHING SEASON

UNDER THE ACORNS

DOWNS

FOREST

BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY

OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY

HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING

OUTSIDE LONDON

ON THE LONDON ROAD

RED ROOFS OF LONDON

A WET NIGHT IN LONDON




SAINT GUIDO


St. Guido ran out at the garden gate into a sandy lane, and down the lane
till he came to a grassy bank. He caught hold of the bunches of grass and
so pulled himself up. There was a footpath on the top which went straight
in between fir-trees, and as he ran along they stood on each side of him
like green walls. They were very near together, and even at the top the
space between them was so narrow that the sky seemed to come down, and
the clouds to be sailing but just over them, as if they would catch and
tear in the fir-trees. The path was so little used that it had grown
green, and as he ran he knocked dead branches out of his way. Just as he
was getting tired of running he reached the end of the path, and came out
into a wheat-field. The wheat did not grow very closely, and the spaces
were filled with azure corn-flowers. St. Guido thought he was safe away
now, so he stopped to look.

Those thoughts and feelings which are not sharply defined but have a haze
of distance and beauty about them are always the dearest. His name was
not really Guido, but those who loved him had called him so in order to
try and express their hearts about him. For they thought if a great
painter could be a little boy, then he would be something like this one.
They were not very learned in the history of painters: they had heard of
Raphael, but Raphael was too elevated, too much of the sky, and of
Titian, but Titian was fond of feminine loveliness, and in the end
somebody said Guido was a dreamy name, as if it belonged to one who was
full of faith. Those golden curls shaking about his head as he ran and
filling the air with radiance round his brow, looked like a Nimbus or
circlet of glory. So they called him St. Guido, and a very, very wild
saint he was.

St. Guido stopped in the cornfield, and looked all round. There were the
fir-trees behind him--a thick wall of green--hedges on the right and the
left, and the wheat sloped down towards an ash-copse in the hollow. No
one was in the field, only the fir-trees, the green hedges, the yellow
wheat, and the sun overhead, Guido kept quite still, because he expected
that in a minute the magic would begin, and something would speak to him.
His cheeks which had been flushed with running grew less hot, but I
cannot tell you the exact colour they were, for his skin was so white and
clear, it would not tan under the sun, yet being always out of doors it
had taken the faintest tint of golden brown mixed with rosiness. His blue
eyes which had been wide open, as they always were when full of mischief,
became softer, and his long eyelashes drooped over them. But as the magic
did not begin, Guido walked on slowly into the wheat, which rose nearly
to his head, though it was not yet so tall as it would be before the
reapers came. He did not break any of the stalks, or bend them down and
step on them; he passed between them, and they yielded on either side.
The wheat-ears were pale gold, having only just left off their green, and
they surrounded him on all sides as if he were bathing.

A butterfly painted a velvety red with white spots came floating along
the surface of the corn, and played round his cap, which was a little
higher, and was so tinted by the sun that the butterfly was inclined to
settle on it. Guido put up his hand to catch the butterfly, forgetting
his secret in his desire to touch it. The butterfly was too quick--with a
snap of his wings disdainfully mocking the idea of catching him, away he
went. Guido nearly stepped on a humble-bee--buzz-zz!--the bee was so
alarmed he actually crept up Guido's knickers to the knee, and even then
knocked himself against a wheat-ear when he started to fly. Guido kept
quite still while the humble-bee was on his knee, knowing that he should
not be stung if he did not move. He knew, too, that humble-bees have
stings though people often say they have not, and the reason people think
they do not possess them is because humble-bees are so good-natured and
never sting unless they are very much provoked.

Next he picked a corn buttercup; the flowers were much smaller than the
great buttercups which grew in the meadows, and these were not golden but
coloured like brass. His foot caught in a creeper, and he nearly
tumbled--it was a bine of bindweed which went twisting round and round
two stalks of wheat in a spiral, binding them together as if some one had
wound string about them. There was one ear of wheat which had black
specks on it, and another which had so much black that the grains seemed
changed and gone leaving nothing but blackness. He touched it and it
stained his hands like a dark powder, and then he saw that it was not
perfectly black as charcoal is, it was a little red. Something was
burning up the corn there just as if fire had been set to the ears. Guido
went on and found another place where there was hardly any wheat at all,
and those stalks that grew were so short they only came above his knee.
The wheat-ears were thin and small, and looked as if there was nothing
but chaff. But this place being open was full of flowers, such lovely
azure cornflowers which the people call bluebottles.

Guido took two; they were curious flowers with knobs surrounded with
little blue flowers like a lady's bonnet. They were a beautiful blue, not
like any other blue, not like the violets in the garden, or the sky over
the trees, or the geranium in the grass, or the bird's-eyes by the path.
He loved them and held them tight in his hand, and went on, leaving the
red pimpernel wide open to the dry air behind him, but the May-weed was
everywhere. The May-weed had white flowers like a moon-daisy, but not so
large, and leaves like moss. He could not walk without stepping on these
mossy tufts, though he did not want to hurt them. So he stooped and
stroked the moss-like leaves and said, "I do not want to hurt you, but
you grow so thick I cannot help it." In a minute afterwards as he was
walking he heard a quick rush, and saw the wheat-ears sway this way and
that as if a puff of wind had struck them.

Guido stood still and his eyes opened very wide, he had forgotten to cut
a stick to fight with: he watched the wheat-ears sway, and could see them
move for some distance, and he did not know what it was. Perhaps it was a
wild boar or a yellow lion, or some creature no one had ever seen; he
would not go back, but he wished he had cut a nice stick. Just then a
swallow swooped down and came flying over the wheat so close that Guido
almost felt the flutter of his wings, and as he passed he whispered to
Guido that it was only a hare. "Then why did he run away?" said Guido; "I
should not have hurt him." But the swallow had gone up high into the sky
again, and did not hear him. All the time Guido was descending the slope,
for little feet always go down the hill as water does, and when he looked
back he found that he had left the fir-trees so far behind he was in the
middle of the field. If any one had looked they could hardly have seen
him, and if he had taken his cap off they could not have done so because
the yellow curls would be so much the same colour as the yellow corn. He
stooped to see how nicely he could hide himself, then he knelt, and in a
minute sat down, so that the wheat rose up high above him.

Another humble-bee went over along the tips of the wheat--burr-rr--as he
passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling
a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital
piece of wood to bite up into tiny pieces and make into paper for the
nest in the thatch, but his friend wanted to go to the house because
there was a pear quite ripe there on the wall. Next came a moth, and
after the moth a golden fly, and three gnats, and a mouse ran along the
dry ground with a curious sniffling rustle close to Guido. A shrill cry
came down out of the air, and looking up he saw two swifts turning
circles, and as they passed each other they shrieked--their voices were
so shrill they shrieked. They were only saying that in a month their
little swifts in the slates would be able to fly. While he sat so quiet
on the ground and hidden by the wheat, he heard a cuckoo such a long way
off it sounded like a watch when it is covered up. "Cuckoo" did not come
full and distinct--it was such a tiny little "cuckoo" caught in the
hollow of Guido's ear. The cuckoo must have been a mile away.

Suddenly he thought something went over, and yet he did not see
it--perhaps it was the shadow--and he looked up and saw a large bird not
very far up, not farther than he could fling, or shoot his arrows, and
the bird was fluttering his wings, but did not move away farther, as if
he had been tied in the air. Guido knew it was a hawk, and the hawk was
staying there to see if there was a mouse or a little bird in the wheat.
After a minute the hawk stopped fluttering and lifted his wings together
as a butterfly does when he shuts his, and down the hawk came, straight
into the corn. "Go away!" shouted Guido jumping up, and flinging his cap,
and the hawk, dreadfully frightened and terribly cross, checked himself
and rose again with an angry rush. So the mouse escaped, but Guido could
not find his cap for some time. Then he went on, and still the ground
sloping sent him down the hill till he came close to the copse.

Some sparrows came out from the copse, and he stopped and saw one of them
perch on a stalk of wheat, with one foot above the other sideways, so
that he could pick at the ear and get the corn. Guido watched the sparrow
clear the ear, then he moved, and the sparrows flew back to the copse,
where they chattered at him for disturbing them. There was a ditch
between the corn and the copse, and a streamlet; he picked up a stone and
threw it in, and the splash frightened a rabbit, who slipped over the
bank and into a hole. The boughs of an oak reached out across to the
corn, and made so pleasant a shade that Guido, who was very hot from
walking in the sun, sat down on the bank of the streamlet with his feet
dangling over it, and watched the floating grass sway slowly as the water
ran. Gently he leaned back till his back rested on the sloping ground--he
raised one knee, and left the other foot over the verge where the tip of
the tallest rushes touched it. Before he had been there a minute he
remembered the secret which a fern had taught him.

First, if he wanted to know anything, or to hear a story, or what the
grass was saying, or the oak-leaves singing, he must be careful not to
interfere as he had done just now with the butterfly by trying to catch
him. Fortunately, that butterfly was a nice butterfly, and very
kindhearted, but sometimes, if you interfered with one thing, it would
tell another thing, and they would all know in a moment, and stop
talking, and never say a word. Once, while they were all talking
pleasantly, Guido caught a fly in his hand, he felt his hand tickle as
the fly stepped on it, and he shut up his little fist so quickly he
caught the fly in the hollow between the palm and his fingers. The fly
went buzz, and rushed to get out, but Guido laughed, so the fly buzzed
again, and just told the grass, and the grass told the bushes, and
everything knew in a moment, and Guido never heard another word all that
day. Yet sometimes now they all knew something about him, they would go
on talking. You see, they all rather petted and spoiled him. Next, if
Guido did not hear them conversing, the fern said he must touch a little
piece of grass and put it against his cheek, or a leaf, and kiss it, and
say, "Leaf, leaf, tell them I am here."

Now, while he was lying down, and the tip of the rushes touched his foot,
he remembered this, so he moved the rush with his foot and said, "Rush,
rush, tell them I am here." Immediately there came a little wind, and the
wheat swung to and fro, the oak-leaves rustled, the rushes bowed, and the
shadows slipped forwards and back again. Then it was still, and the
nearest wheat-ear to Guido nodded his head, and said in a very low tone,
"Guido, dear, just this minute I do not feel very happy, although the
sunshine is so warm, because I have been thinking, for we have been in
one or other of these fields of your papa's a thousand years this very
year. Every year we have been sown, and weeded, and reaped, and garnered.
Every year the sun has ripened us and the rain made us grow; every year
for a thousand years."

"What did you see all that time?" said Guido.

"The swallows came," said the Wheat, "and flew over us, and sang a little
sweet song, and then they went up into the chimneys and built their
nests."

"At my house?" said Guido.

"Oh, no, dear, the house I was then thinking of is gone, like a leaf
withered and lost. But we have not forgotten any of the songs they sang
us, nor have the swallows that you see to-day--one of them spoke to you
just now--forgotten what we said to their ancestors. Then the blackbirds
came out in us and ate the creeping creatures, so that they should not
hurt us, and went up into the oaks and whistled such beautiful sweet low
whistles. Not in those oaks, dear, where the blackbirds whistle to-day;
even the very oaks have gone, though they were so strong that one of them
defied the lightning, and lived years and years after it struck him. One
of the very oldest of the old oaks in the copse, dear, is his grandchild.
If you go into the copse you will find an oak which has only one branch;
he is so old, he has only that branch left. He sprang up from an acorn
dropped from an oak that grew from an acorn dropped from the oak the
lightning struck. So that is three oak lives, Guido dear, back to the
time I was thinking of just now. And that oak under whose shadow you are
now lying is the fourth of them, and he is quite young, though he is so
big.

"A jay sowed the acorn from which he grew up; the jay was in the oak with
one branch, and some one frightened him, and as he flew he dropped the
acorn which he had in his bill just there, and now you are lying in the
shadow of the tree. So you see, it is a very long time ago, when the
blackbirds came and whistled up in those oaks I was thinking of, and that
was why I was not very happy."

"But you have heard the blackbirds whistling ever since?" said Guido;
"and there was such a big black one up in our cherry tree this morning,
and I shot my arrow at him and very nearly hit him. Besides, there is a
blackbird whistling now--you listen. There, he's somewhere in the copse.
Why can't you listen to him, and be happy now?"

"I will be happy, dear, as you are here, but still it is a long, long
time, and then I think, after I am dead, and there is more wheat in my
place, the blackbirds will go on whistling for another thousand years
after me. For of course I did not hear them all that time ago myself,
dear, but the wheat which was before me heard them and told me. They told
me, too, and I know it is true, that the cuckoo came and called all day
till the moon shone at night, and began again in the morning before the
dew had sparkled in the sunrise. The dew dries very soon on wheat, Guido
dear, because wheat is so dry; first the sunrise makes the tips of the
wheat ever so faintly rosy, then it grows yellow, then as the heat
increases it becomes white at noon, and golden in the afternoon, and
white again under the moonlight. Besides which wide shadows come over
from the clouds, and a wind always follows the shadow and waves us, and
every time we sway to and fro that alters our colour. A rough wind gives
us one tint, and heavy rain another, and we look different on a cloudy
day to what we do on a sunny one. All these colours changed on us when
the blackbird was whistling in the oak the lightning struck, the fourth
one backwards from me; and it makes me sad to think that after four more
oaks have gone, the same colours will come on the wheat that will grow
then. It is thinking about those past colours, and songs, and leaves, and
of the colours and the sunshine, and the songs, and the leaves that will
come in the future that makes to-day so much. It makes to-day a thousand
years long backwards, and a thousand years long forwards, and makes the
sun so warm, and the air so sweet, and the butterflies so lovely, and the
hum of the bees, and everything so delicious. We cannot have enough of
it."

"No, that we cannot," said Guido. "Go on, you talk so nice and low. I
feel sleepy and jolly. Talk away, old Wheat."

"Let me see," said the Wheat. "Once on a time while the men were knocking
us out of the ear on a floor with flails, which are sticks with little
hinges--"

"As if I did not know what a flail was!" said Guido. "I hit old John with
the flail, and Ma gave him a shilling not to be cross."

"While they were knocking us with the hard sticks," the Wheat went on,
"we heard them talking about a king who was shot with an arrow like yours
in the forest--it slipped from a tree, and went into him instead of into
the deer. And long before that the men came up the river--the stream in
the ditch there runs into the river--in rowing ships--how you would like
one to play in, Guido! For they were not like the ships now which are
machines, they were rowing ships--men's ships--and came right up into the
land ever so far, all along the river up to the place where the stream in
the ditch runs in; just where your papa took you in the punt, and you got
the waterlilies, the white ones."

"And wetted my sleeve right up my arm--oh, I know! I can row you, old
Wheat; I can row as well as my papa can."

"But since the rowing ships came, the ploughs have turned up this ground
a thousand times," said the Wheat; "and each time the furrows smelt
sweeter, and this year they smelt sweetest of all. The horses have such
glossy coats, and such fine manes, and they are so strong and beautiful.
They drew the ploughs along and made the ground give up its sweetness and
savour, and while they were doing it, the spiders in the copse spun their
silk along from the ashpoles, and the mist in the morning weighed down
their threads. It was so delicious to come out of the clods as we pushed
our green leaves up and felt the rain, and the wind, and the warm sun.
Then a little bird came in the copse and called, 'Sip-sip, sip, sip,
sip,' such a sweet low song, and the larks ran along the ground in
between us, and there were bluebells in the copse, and anemones; till
by-and-by the sun made us yellow, and the blue flowers that you have in
your hand came out. I cannot tell you how many there have been of these
flowers since the oak was struck by the lightning, in all the thousand
years there must have been altogether--I cannot tell you how many."

"Why didn't I pick them all?" said Guido.

"Do you know," said the Wheat, "we have thought so much more, and felt so
much more, since your people took us, and ploughed for us, and sowed us,
and reaped us. We are not like the same wheat we used to be before your
people touched us, when we grew wild, and there were huge great things in
the woods and marshes which I will not tell you about lest you should be
frightened. Since we have felt your hands, and you have touched us, we
have felt so much more. Perhaps that was why I was not very happy till
you came, for I was thinking quite as much about your people as about us,
and how all the flowers of all those thousand years, and all the songs,
and the sunny days were gone, and all the people were gone too, who had
heard the blackbirds whistle in the oak the lightning struck. And those
that are alive now--there will be cuckoos calling, and the eggs in the
thrushes' nests, and blackbirds whistling, and blue cornflowers, a
thousand years after every one of them is gone.

"So that is why it is so sweet this minute, and why I want you, and your
people, dear, to be happy now and to have all these things, and to agree
so as not to be so anxious and careworn, but to come out with us, or sit
by us, and listen to the blackbirds, and hear the wind rustle us, and be
happy. Oh, I wish I could make them happy, and do away with all their
care and anxiety, and give you all heaps and heaps of flowers! Don't go
away, darling, do you lie still, and I will talk and sing to you, and you
can pick some more flowers when you get up. There is a beautiful shadow
there, and I heard the streamlet say that he would sing a little to you;
he is not very big, he cannot sing very loud. By-and-by, I know, the sun
will make us as dry as dry, and darker, and then the reapers will come
while the spiders are spinning their silk again--this time it will come
floating in the blue air, for the air seems blue if you look up.

"It is a great joy to your people, dear, when the reaping time arrives:
the harvest is a great joy to you when the thistledown comes rolling
along in the wind. So that I shall be happy even when the reapers cut me
down, because I know it is for you, and your people, my love. The strong
men will come to us gladly, and the women, and the little children will
sit in the shade and gather great white trumpets of convolvulus, and come
to tell their mothers how they saw the young partridges in the next
field. But there is one thing we do not like, and that is, all the labour
and the misery. Why cannot your people have us without so much labour,
and why are so many of you unhappy? Why cannot they be all happy with us
as you are, dear? For hundreds and hundreds of years now the wheat every
year has been sorrowful for your people, and I think we get more
sorrowful every year about it, because as I was telling you just now the
flowers go, and the swallows go, the old, old oaks go, and that oak will
go, under the shade of which you are lying, Guido; and if your people do
not gather the flowers now, and watch the swallows, and listen to the
blackbirds whistling, as you are listening now while I talk, then Guido,
my love, they will never pick any flowers, nor hear any birds' songs.
They think they will, they think that when they have toiled, and worked a
long time, almost all their lives, then they will come to the flowers,
and the birds, and be joyful in the sunshine. But no, it will not be so,
for then they will be old themselves, and their ears dull, and their eyes
dim, so that the birds will sound a great distance off, and the flowers
will not seem bright.

"Of course, we know that the greatest part of your people cannot help
themselves, and must labour on like the reapers till their ears are full
of the dust of age. That only makes us more sorrowful, and anxious that
things should be different. I do not suppose we should think about them
had we not been in man's hand so long that now we have got to feel with
man. Every year makes it more pitiful because then there are more flowers
gone, and added to the vast numbers of those gone before, and never
gathered or looked at, though they could have given so much pleasure. And
all the work and labour, and thinking, and reading and learning that your
people do ends in nothing--not even one flower. We cannot understand why
it should be so. There are thousands of wheat-ears in this field, more
than you would know how to write down with your pencil, though you have
learned your tables, sir. Yet all of us thinking, and talking, cannot
understand why it is when we consider how clever your people are, and how
they bring ploughs, and steam-engines, and put up wires along the roads
to tell you things when you are miles away, and sometimes we are sown
where we can hear the hum, hum, all day of the children learning in the
school. The butterflies flutter over us, and the sun shines, and the
doves are very, very happy at their nest, but the children go on hum, hum
inside this house, and learn, learn. So we suppose you must be very
clever, and yet you cannot manage this. All your work is wasted, and you
labour in vain--you dare not leave it a minute.

"If you left it a minute it would all be gone; it does not mount up and
make a store, so that all of you could sit by it and be happy. Directly
you leave off you are hungry, and thirsty, and miserable like the beggars
that tramp along the dusty road here. All the thousand years of labour
since this field was first ploughed have not stored up anything for you.
It would not matter about the work so much if you were only happy; the
bees work every year, but they are happy; the doves build a nest every
year, but they are very, very happy. We think it must be because you do
not come out to us and be with us, and think more as we do. It is not
because your people have not got plenty to eat and drink--you have as
much as the bees. Why just look at us! Look at the wheat that grows all
over the world; all the figures that were ever written in pencil could
not tell how much, it is such an immense quantity. Yet your people starve
and die of hunger every now and then, and we have seen the wretched
beggars tramping along the road. We have known of times when there was a
great pile of us, almost a hill piled up, it was not in this country, it
was in another warmer country, and yet no one dared to touch it--they
died at the bottom of the hill of wheat. The earth is full of skeletons
of people who have died of hunger. They are dying now this minute in your
big cities, with nothing but stones all round them, stone walls and stone
streets; not jolly stones like those you threw in the water, dear--hard,
unkind stones that make them cold and let them die, while we are growing
here, millions of us, in the sunshine with the butterflies floating over
us. This makes us unhappy; I was very unhappy this morning till you came
running over and played with us.

"It is not because there is not enough: it is because your people are so
short-sighted, so jealous and selfish, and so curiously infatuated with
things that are not so good as your old toys which you have flung away
and forgotten. And you teach the children hum, hum, all day to care about
such silly things, and to work for them and to look to them as the object
of their lives. It is because you do not share us among you without price
or difference; because you do not share the great earth among you fairly,
without spite and jealousy and avarice; because you will not agree; you
silly, foolish people to let all the flowers wither for a thousand years
while you keep each other at a distance, instead of agreeing and sharing
them! Is there something in you--as there is poison in the nightshade,
you know it, dear, your papa told you not to touch it--is there a sort of
poison in your people that works them up into a hatred of one another?
Why, then, do you not agree and have all things, all the great earth can
give you, just as we have the sunshine and the rain? How happy your
people could be if they would only agree! But you go on teaching even the
little children to follow the same silly objects, hum, hum, hum, all the
day, and they will grow up to hate each other, and to try which can get
the most round things--you have one in your pocket."

"Sixpence," said Guido. "It's quite a new one."

"And other things quite as silly," the Wheat continued. "All the time the
flowers are flowering, but they will go, even the oaks will go. We think
the reason you do not all have plenty, and why you do not do only just a
little work, and why you die of hunger if you leave off, and why so many
of you are unhappy in body and mind, and all the misery is because you
have not got a spirit like the wheat, like us; you will not agree, and
you will not share, and you will hate each other, and you will be so
avaricious, and you will _not_ touch the flowers, or go into the sunshine
(you would rather half of you died among the hard stones first), and you
will teach your children hum, hum, to follow in some foolish course that
has caused you all this unhappiness a thousand years, and you will _not_
have a spirit like us, and feel like us. Till you have a spirit like us,
and feel like us, you will never, never be happy. Lie still, dear; the
shadow of the oak is broad and will not move from you for a long time
yet."

"But perhaps Paul will come up to my house, and Percy and Morna."

"Look up in the oak very quietly, don't move, just open your eyes and
look," said the Wheat, who was very cunning. Guido looked and saw a
lovely little bird climbing up a branch. It was chequered, black and
white, like a very small magpie, only without such a long tail, and it
had a spot of red about its neck. It was a pied woodpecker, not the large
green woodpecker, but another kind. Guido saw it go round the branch, and
then some way up, and round again till it came to a place that pleased
it, and then the woodpecker struck the bark with its bill, tap-tap. The
sound was quite loud, ever so much more noise than such a tiny bill
seemed able to make. Tap-tap! If Guido had not been still so that the
bird had come close he would never have found it among the leaves.
Tap-tap! After it had picked out all the insects there, the woodpecker
flew away over the ashpoles of the copse.

"I should just like to stroke him," said Guido. "If I climbed up into the
oak perhaps he would come again, and I could catch him."

"No," said the Wheat, "he only comes once a day,"

"Then tell me stories," said Guido, imperiously.

"I will if I can," said the Wheat. "Once upon a time, when the oak the
lightning struck was still living, and when the wheat was green in this
very field, a man came staggering out of the wood, and walked out into
it. He had an iron helmet on, and he was wounded, and his blood stained
the green wheat red as he walked. He tried to get to the streamlet, which
was wider then, Guido dear, to drink, for he knew it was there, but he
could not reach it. He fell down and died in the green wheat, dear, for
he was very much hurt with a sharp spear, but more so with hunger and
thirst."

"I am so sorry," said Guido; "and now I look at you, why you are all
thirsty and dry, you nice old Wheat, and the ground is as dry as dry
under you; I will get you something to drink."

And down he scrambled into the ditch, setting his foot firm on a root,
for though he was so young, he knew how to get down to the water without
wetting his feet, or falling in, and how to climb up a tree, and
everything jolly. Guido dipped his hand in the streamlet, and flung the
water over the wheat, five or six good sprinklings till the drops hung on
the wheat-ears. Then he said, "Now you are better."

"Yes, dear, thank you, my love," said the Wheat, who was very pleased,
though of course the water was not enough to wet its roots. Still it was
pleasant, like a very little shower. Guido lay down on his chest this
time, with his elbows on the ground, propping his head up, and as he now
faced the wheat he could see in between the stalks.

"Lie still," said the Wheat, "the corncrake is not very far off, he has
come up here since your papa told the mowers to mow the meadow, and very
likely if you stay quiet you will see him. If you do not understand all I
say, never mind, dear; the sunshine is warm, but not too warm in the
shade, and we all love you, and want you to be as happy as ever you can
be."

"It is jolly to be quite hidden like this," said Guido. "No one could
find me; if Paul were to look all day he would never find me; even Papa
could not find me. Now go on and tell me stories."

"Ever so many times, when the oak the lightning struck was young," said
the Wheat, "great stags used to come out of the wood and feed on the
green wheat; it was early in the morning when they came. Such great
stags, and so proud, and yet so timid, the least thing made them go
bound, bound, bound."

"Oh, I know!" said Guido; "I saw some jump over the fence in the
forest--I am going there again soon. If I take my bow I will shoot one!"

"But there are no deer here now," said the Wheat; "they have been gone a
long, long time; though I think your papa has one of their antlers,"

"Now, how did you know that?" said Guido; "you have never been to our
house, and you cannot see in from here because the fir copse is in the
way; how do you find out these things?"

"Oh!" said the Wheat, laughing, "we have lots of ways of finding out
things. Don't you remember the swallow that swooped down and told you not
to be frightened at the hare? The swallow has his nest at your house, and
he often flies by your windows and looks in, and he told me. The birds
tell us lots of things, and all about what is over the sea."

"But that is not a story," said Guido.

"Once upon a time," said the Wheat, "when the oak the lightning struck
was alive, your papa's papa's papa, ever so much farther back than that,
had all the fields round here, all that you can see from Acre Hill. And
do you know it happened that in time every one of them was lost or sold,
and your family, Guido dear, were homeless--no house, no garden or
orchard, and no dogs or guns, or anything jolly. One day the papa that
was then came along the road with _his_ little Guido, and they were
beggars, dear, and had no place to sleep, and they slept all night in the
wheat in this very field close to where the hawthorn bush grows
now--where you picked the May flowers, you know, my love. They slept
there all the summer night, and the fern owls flew to and fro, and the
bats and crickets chirped, and the stars shone faintly, as if they were
made pale by the heat. The poor papa never had a house, but that little
Guido lived to grow up a great man, and he worked so hard, and he was so
clever, and every one loved him, which was the best of all things. He
bought this very field and then another, and another, and got such a lot
of the old fields back again, and the goldfinches sang for joy, and so
did the larks and the thrushes, because they said what a kind man he was.
Then his son got some more of them, till at last your papa bought ever so
many more. But we often talk about the little boy who slept in the wheat
in this field, which was his father's father's field. If only the wheat
then could have helped him, and been kind to him, you may be sure it
would. We love you so much we like to see the very crumbs left by the men
who do the hoeing when they eat their crusts; we wish they could have
more to eat, but we like to see their crumbs, which you know are made of
wheat, so that we have done them some good at least."

"That's not a story," said Guido.

"There's a gold coin here somewhere," said the Wheat, "such a pretty one,
it would make a capital button for your jacket, dear, or for your mamma;
that is all any sort of money is good for; I wish all the coins were made
into buttons for little Guido."

"Where is it?" said Guido.

"I can't exactly tell where it is," said the Wheat. "It was very near me
once, and I thought the next thunder's rain would wash it down into the
streamlet--it has been here ever so long, it came here first just after
the oak the lightning split died. And it has been rolled about by the
ploughs ever since, and no one has ever seen it; I thought it must go
into the ditch at last, but when the men came to hoe one of them knocked
it back, and then another kicked it along--it was covered with earth--and
then, one day, a rook came and split the clod open with his bill, and
pushed the pieces first one side and then the other, and the coin went
one way, but I did not see; I must ask a humble-bee, or a mouse, or a
mole, or some one who knows more about it. It is very thin, so that if
the rook's bill had struck it, his strong bill would have made a dint in
it, and there is, I think, a ship marked on it."

"Oh, I must have it! A ship! Ask a humble-bee directly; be quick!"

Bang! There was a loud report, a gun had gone off in the copse.

"That's my papa," shouted Guido. "I'm sure that was my papa's gun!" Up he
jumped, and getting down the ditch, stepped across the water, and,
seizing a hazel-bough to help himself, climbed up the bank. At the top he
slipped through the fence by the oak and so into the copse. He was in
such a hurry he did not mind the thistles or the boughs that whipped him
as they sprang back, he scrambled through, meeting the vapour of the
gunpowder and the smell of sulphur. In a minute he found a green path,
and in the path was his papa, who had just shot a cruel crow. The crow
had been eating the birds' eggs, and picking the little birds to pieces.



GOLDEN-BROWN


Three fruit-pickers--women--were the first people I met near the village
(in Kent). They were clad in "rags and jags," and the face of the eldest
was in "jags" also. It was torn and scarred by time and weather;
wrinkled, and in a manner twisted like the fantastic turns of a gnarled
tree-trunk, hollow and decayed. Through these jags and tearings of
weather, wind, and work, the nakedness of the countenance--the barren
framework--was visible; the cheekbones like knuckles, the chin of brown
stoneware, the upper-lip smooth, and without the short groove which
should appear between lip and nostrils. Black shadows dwelt in the
hollows of the cheeks and temples, and there was a blackness about the
eyes. This blackness gathers in the faces of the old who have been much
exposed to the sun, the fibres of the skin are scorched and half-charred,
like a stick thrust in the fire, and withdrawn before the flames seize
it. Beside her were two young women, both in the freshness of youth and
health. Their faces glowed with a golden-brown, and so great is the
effect of colour that their plain features were transfigured. The
sunlight under their faces made them beautiful. The summer light had been
absorbed by the skin and now shone forth from it again; as certain
substances exposed to the day absorb light and emit a phosphorescent
gleam in the darkness of night, so the sunlight had been drank up by the
surface of the skin, and emanated from it.

Hour after hour in the gardens and orchards they worked in the full beams
of the sun, gathering fruit for the London market, resting at midday in
the shade of the elms in the corner. Even then they were in the
sunshine--even in the shade, for the air carries it, or its influence, as
it carries the perfumes of flowers. The heated air undulates over the
field in waves which are visible at a distance; near at hand they are not
seen, but roll in endless ripples through the shadows of the trees,
bringing with them the actinic power of the sun. Not actinic--alchemic--
some intangible mysterious power which cannot be supplied in any other
form but the sun's rays. It reddens the cherry, it gilds the apple, it
colours the rose, it ripens the wheat, it touches a woman's face with
the golden-brown of ripe life--ripe as a plum. There is no other hue so
beautiful as this human sunshine tint.

The great painters knew it--Rubens, for instance; perhaps he saw it on
the faces of the women who gathered fruit or laboured at the harvest in
the Low Countries centuries since. He could never have seen it in a city
of these northern climes, that is certain. Nothing in nature that I know,
except the human face, ever attains this colour. Nothing like it is ever
seen in the sky, either at dawn or sunset; the dawn is often golden,
often scarlet, or purple and gold; the sunset crimson, flaming bright, or
delicately grey and scarlet; lovely colours all of them, but not like
this. Nor is there any flower comparable to it, nor any gem. It is purely
human, and it is only found on the human face which has felt the sunshine
continually. There must, too, I suppose, be a disposition towards it, a
peculiar and exceptional condition of the fibres which build up the skin;
for of the numbers who work out of doors, very, very few possess it; they
become brown, red, or tanned, sometimes of a parchment hue--they do not
get this colour.

These two women from the fruit gardens had the golden-brown in their
faces, and their plain features were transfigured. They were walking in
the dusty road; there was as background a high, dusty hawthorn hedge
which had lost the freshness of spring and was browned by the work of
caterpillars; they were in rags and jags, their shoes had split, and
their feet looked twice as wide in consequence. Their hands were black;
not grimy, but absolutely black, and neither hands nor necks ever knew
water, I am sure. There was not the least shape to their garments; their
dresses simply hung down in straight ungraceful lines; there was no
colour of ribbon or flower, to light up the dinginess. But they had the
golden-brown in their faces, and they were beautiful.

The feet, as they walked, were set firm on the ground, and the body
advanced with measured, deliberate, yet lazy and confident grace;
shoulders thrown back--square, but not over-square (as those who have
been drilled); hips swelling at the side in lines like the full bust,
though longer drawn; busts well filled and shapely, despite the rags and
jags and the washed-out gaudiness of the shawl. There was that in their
cheeks that all the wealth of London could not purchase--a superb health
in their carriage princesses could not obtain. It came, then, from the
air and sunlight, and still more, from some alchemy unknown to the
physician or the physiologist, some faculty exercised by the body,
happily endowed with a special power of extracting the utmost richness
and benefit from the rudest elements. Thrice blessed and fortunate,
beautiful golden-brown in their cheeks, superb health in their gait, they
walked as the immortals on earth.

As they passed they regarded me with bitter envy, jealousy, and hatred
written in their eyes; they cursed me in their hearts. I verily
believe--so unmistakably hostile were their glances--that had opportunity
been given, in the dead of night and far from help, they would gladly
have taken me unawares with some blow of stone or club, and, having
rendered me senseless, would have robbed me, and considered it a
righteous act. Not that there was any blood-thirstiness or exceptional
evil in their nature more than in that of the thousand-and-one toilers
that are met on the highway, but simply because they worked--such hard
work of hands and stooping backs, and I was idle, for all they knew.
Because they were going from one field of labour to another field of
labour, and I walked slowly and did no visible work. My dress showed no
stain, the weather had not battered it; there was no rent, no rags and
jags. At an hour when they were merely changing one place of work for
another place of work, to them it appeared that I had found idleness
indoors wearisome and had just come forth to exchange it for another
idleness. They saw no end to their labour; they had worked from
childhood, and could see no possible end to labour until limbs failed or
life closed. Why should they be like this? Why should I do nothing? They
were as good as I was, and they hated me. Their indignant glances spoke
it as plain as words, and far more distinctly than I can write it. You
cannot read it with such feeling as I received their looks.

Beautiful golden-brown, superb health, what would I not give for these?
To be the thrice-blessed and chosen of nature, what inestimable fortune!
To be indifferent to any circumstances--to be quite thoughtless as to
draughts and chills, careless of heat, indifferent to the character of
dinners, able to do well on hard, dry bread, capable of sleeping in the
open under a rick, or some slight structure of a hurdle, propped on a few
sticks and roughly thatched with straw, and to sleep sound as an oak, and
wake strong as an oak in the morning-gods, what a glorious life! I envied
them; they fancied I looked askance at their rags and jags. I envied
them, and considered their health and hue ideal. I envied them that
unwearied step, that firm uprightness, and measured yet lazy gait, but
most of all the power which they possessed, though they did not exercise
it intentionally, of being always in the sunlight, the air, and abroad
upon the earth. If so they chose, and without stress or strain, they
could see the sunrise, they could be with him as it were--unwearied and
without distress--the livelong day; they could stay on while the moon
rose over the corn, and till the silent stars at silent midnight shone in
the cool summer night, and on and on till the cock crew and the faint
dawn appeared. The whole time in the open air, resting at mid-day under
the elms with the ripple of heat flowing through the shadow; at midnight
between the ripe corn and the hawthorn hedge on the white wild camomile
and the poppy pale in the duskiness, with face upturned to the thoughtful
heaven.

Consider the glory of it, the life above this life to be obtained from
constant presence with the sunlight and the stars. I thought of them all
day, and envied them (as they envied me), and in the evening I found them
again. It was growing dark, and the shadow took away something of the
coarseness of the group outside one of the village "pothouses." Green
foliage overhung them and the men with whom they were drinking; the white
pipes, the blue smoke, the flash of a match, the red sign which had so
often swung to and fro in the gales now still in the summer eve, the rude
seats and blocks, the reaping-hooks bound about the edge with hay, the
white dogs creeping from knee to knee, some such touches gave an interest
to the scene. But a quarrel had begun; the men swore, but the women did
worse. It is impossible to give a hint of the language they used,
especially the elder of the three whose hollow face was blackened by time
and exposure. The two golden-brown girls were so heavily intoxicated they
could but stagger to and fro and mouth and gesticulate, and one held a
quart from which, as she moved, she spilled the ale.



WILD FLOWERS


A fir-tree is not a flower, and yet it is associated in my mind with
primroses. There was a narrow lane leading into a wood, where I used to
go almost every day in the early months of the year, and at one corner it
was overlooked by three spruce firs. The rugged lane there began to
ascend the hill, and I paused a moment to look back. Immediately the high
fir-trees guided the eye upwards, and from their tops to the deep azure
of the March sky over, but a step from the tree to the heavens. So it has
ever been to me, by day or by night, summer or winter, beneath trees the
heart feels nearer to that depth of life the far sky means. The rest of
spirit found only in beauty, ideal and pure, comes there because the
distance seems within touch of thought. To the heaven thought can reach
lifted by the strong arms of the oak, carried up by the ascent of the
flame-shaped fir. Round the spruce top the blue was deepened,
concentrated by the fixed point; the memory of that spot, as it were, of
the sky is still fresh--I can see it distinctly--still beautiful and full
of meaning. It is painted in bright colour in my mind, colour thrice
laid, and indelible; as one passes a shrine and bows the head to the
Madonna, so I recall the picture and stoop in spirit to the aspiration it
yet arouses. For there is no saint like the sky, sunlight shining from
its face.

The fir-tree flowered thus before the primroses--the first of all to give
me a bloom, beyond reach but visible, while even the hawthorn buds
hesitated to open. Primroses were late there, a high district and thin
soil; you could read of them as found elsewhere in January; they rarely
came much before March, and but sparingly then. On the warm red sand
(red, at least, to look at, but green by geological courtesy, I think) of
Sussex, round about Hurst of the Pierre-points, primroses are seen soon
after the year has turned. In the lanes about that curious old mansion,
with its windows reaching from floor to roof, that stands at the base of
Wolstanbury Hill, they grow early, and ferns linger in sheltered overhung
banks. The South Down range, like a great wall, shuts off the sea, and
has a different climate on either hand; south by the sea--hard, harsh,
flowerless, almost grassless, bitter, and cold; on the north side, just
over the hill--warm, soft, with primroses and fern, willows budding and
birds already busy. It is a double England there, two countries side by
side.

On a summer's day Wolstanbury Hill is an island in sunshine; you may lie
on the grassy rampart, high up in the most delicate air--Grecian air,
pellucid--alone, among the butterflies and humming bees at the thyme,
alone and isolated; endless masses of hills on three sides, endless weald
or valley on the fourth; all warmly lit with sunshine, deep under liquid
sunshine like the sands under the liquid sea, no harshness of man-made
sound to break the insulation amid nature, on an island in a far Pacific
of sunshine. Some people would hesitate to walk down the staircase cut in
the turf to the beech-trees beneath; the woods look so small beneath, so
far down and steep, and no handrail. Many go to the Dyke, but none to
Wolstanbury Hill. To come over the range reminds one of what travellers
say of coming over the Alps into Italy; from harsh sea-slopes, made dry
with salt as they sow salt on razed cities that naught may grow, to warm
plains rich in all things, and with great hills as pictures hung on a
wall to gaze at. Where there are beech-trees the land is always
beautiful; beech-trees at the foot of this hill, beech-trees at Arundel
in that lovely park which the Duke of Norfolk, to his glory, leaves open
to all the world, and where the anemones flourish in unusual size and
number; beech-trees in Marlborough Forest; beech-trees at the summit to
which the lane leads that was spoken of just now. Beech and beautiful
scenery go together.

But the primroses by that lane did not appear till late; they covered the
banks under the thousand thousand ash-poles; foxes slipped along there
frequently, whose friends in scarlet coats could not endure the pale
flowers, for they might chink their spurs homewards. In one meadow near
primroses were thicker than the grass, with gorse interspersed, and the
rabbits that came out fed among flowers. The primroses last on to the
celandines and cowslips, through the time of the bluebells, past the
violets--one dies but passes on the life to another, one sets light to
the next, till the ruddy oaks and singing cuckoos call up the tall mowing
grass to fringe summer.

Before I had any conscious thought it was a delight to me to find wild
flowers, just to see them. It was a pleasure to gather them and to take
them home; a pleasure to show them to others--to keep them as long as
they would live, to decorate the room with them, to arrange them
carelessly with grasses, green sprays, tree-bloom--large branches of
chestnut snapped off, and set by a picture perhaps. Without conscious
thought of seasons and the advancing hours to light on the white wild
violet, the meadow orchis, the blue veronica, the blue meadow cranesbill;
feeling the warmth and delight of the increasing sun-rays, but not
recognising whence or why it was joy. All the world is young to a boy,
and thought has not entered into it; even the old men with grey hair do
not seem old; different but not aged, the idea of age has not been
mastered. A boy has to frown and study, and then does not grasp what long
years mean. The various hues of the petals pleased without any knowledge
of colour-contrasts, no note even of colour except that it was bright,
and the mind was made happy without consideration of those ideals and
hopes afterwards associated with the azure sky above the fir-tree. A
fresh footpath, a fresh flower, a fresh delight. The reeds, the grasses,
the rushes--unknown and new things at every step--something always to
find; no barren spot anywhere, or sameness. Every day the grass painted
anew, and its green seen for the first time; not the old green, but a
novel hue and spectacle, like the first view of the sea.

If we had never before looked upon the earth, but suddenly came to it man
or woman grown, set down in the midst of a summer mead, would it not seem
to us a radiant vision? The hues, the shapes, the song and life of birds,
above all the sunlight, the breath of heaven, resting on it; the mind
would be filled with its glory, unable to grasp it, hardly believing that
such things could be mere matter and no more. Like a dream of some
spirit-land it would appear, scarce fit to be touched lest it should fall
to pieces, too beautiful to be long watched lest it should fade away. So
it seemed to me as a boy, sweet and new like this each morning; and even
now, after the years that have passed, and the lines they have worn in
the forehead, the summer mead shines as bright and fresh as when my foot
first touched the grass. It has another meaning now; the sunshine and the
flowers speak differently, for a heart that has once known sorrow reads
behind the page, and sees sadness in joy. But the freshness is still
there, the dew washes the colours before dawn. Unconscious happiness in
finding wild flowers--unconscious and unquestioning, and therefore
unbounded.

I used to stand by the mower and follow the scythe sweeping down
thousands of the broad-flowered daisies, the knotted knapweeds, the blue
scabious, the yellow rattles, sweeping so close and true that nothing
escaped; and, yet although I had seen so many hundreds of each, although
I had lifted armfuls day after day, still they were fresh. They never
lost their newness, and even now each time I gather a wild flower it
feels a new thing. The greenfinches came to the fallen swathe so near to
us they seemed to have no fear; but I remember the yellowhammers most,
whose colour, like that of the wild flowers and the sky, has never faded
from my memory. The greenfinches sank into the fallen swathe, the loose
grass gave under their weight and let them bathe in flowers.

One yellowhammer sat on a branch of ash the livelong morning, still
singing in the sun; his bright head, his clean bright yellow, gaudy as
Spain, was drawn like a brush charged heavily with colour across the
retina, painting it deeply, for there on the eye's memory it endures,
though that was boyhood and this is manhood, still unchanged. The field--
Stewart's Mash--the very tree, young ash timber, the branch projecting
over the sward, I could make a map of them. Sometimes I think sun-painted
colours are brighter to me than to many, and more strongly affect the
nerves of the eye. Straw going by the road on a dusky winter's day seems
so pleasantly golden, the sheaves lying aslant at the top, and these
bundles of yellow tubes thrown up against the dark ivy on the opposite
wall. Tiles, red burned, or orange coated, the sea sometimes cleanly
definite, the shadows of trees in a thin wood where there is room for
shadows to form and fall; some such shadows are sharper than light, and
have a faint blue tint. Not only in summer but in cold winter, and not
only romantic things but plain matter-of-fact things, as a waggon freshly
painted red beside the wright's shop, stand out as if wet with colour and
delicately pencilled at the edges. It must be out of doors; nothing
indoors looks like this.

Pictures are very dull and gloomy to it, and very contrasted colours like
those the French use are necessary to fix the attention. Their dashes of
pink and scarlet bring the faint shadow of the sun into the room. As for
our painters, their works are hung behind a curtain, and we have to peer
patiently through the dusk of evening to see what they mean. Out-of-door
colours do not need to be gaudy--a mere dull stake of wood thrust in the
ground often stands out sharper than the pink flashes of the French
studio; a faggot; the outline of a leaf; low tints without reflecting
power strike the eye as a bell the ear. To me they are intensely clear,
and the clearer the greater the pleasure. It is often too great, for it
takes me away from solid pursuits merely to receive the impression, as
water is still to reflect the trees. To me it is very painful when
illness blots the definition of outdoor things, so wearisome not to see
them rightly, and more oppressive than actual pain. I feel as if I was
struggling to wake up with dim, half-opened lids and heavy mind. This one
yellowhammer still sits on the ash branch in Stewart's Mash over the
sward, singing in the sun, his feathers freshly wet with colour, the same
sun-song, and will sing to me so long as the heart shall beat.

The first conscious thought about wild flowers was to find out their
names--the first conscious pleasure,--and then I began to see so many
that I had not previously noticed. Once you wish to identify them there
is nothing escapes, down to the little white chickweed of the path and
the moss of the wall. I put my hand on the bridge across the brook to
lean over and look down into the water. Are there any fish? The bricks of
the pier are covered with green, like a wall-painting to the surface of
the stream, mosses along the lines of the mortar, and among the moss
little plants--what are these? In the dry sunlit lane I look up to the
top of the great wall about some domain, where the green figs look over
upright on their stalks; there are dry plants on the coping--what are
these? Some growing thus, high in the air, on stone, and in the chinks of
the tower, suspended in dry air and sunshine; some low down under the
arch of the bridge over the brook, out of sight utterly, unless you stoop
by the brink of the water and project yourself forward to examine under.
The kingfisher sees them as he shoots through the barrel of the culvert.
There the sun direct never shines upon them, but the sunlight thrown up
by the ripples runs all day in bright bars along the vault of the arch,
playing on them. The stream arranges the sand in the shallow in bars,
minute fixed undulations; the stream arranges the sunshine in successive
flashes, undulating as if the sun, drowsy in the heat, were idly closing
and unclosing his eyelids for sleep.

Plants everywhere, hiding behind every tree, under the leaves, in the
shady places, behind the dry furrows of the field; they are only just
behind something, hidden openly. The instant you look for them they
multiply a hundredfold; if you sit on the beach and begin to count the
pebbles by you, their number instantly increases to infinity by virtue of
that conscious act.

The bird's-foot lotus was the first. The boy must have seen it, must have
trodden on it in the bare woodland pastures, certainly run about on it,
with wet naked feet from the bathing; but the boy was not conscious of
it. This was the first, when the desire came to identify and to know,
fixing upon it by means of a pale and feeble picture. In the largest
pasture there were different soils and climates; it was so large it
seemed a little country of itself then--the more so because the ground
rose and fell, making a ridge to divide the view and enlarge by
uncertainty. The high sandy soil on the ridge where the rabbits had their
warren; the rocky soil of the quarry; the long grass by the elms where
the rooks built, under whose nests there were vast unpalatable
mushrooms--the true mushrooms with salmon gills grew nearer the warren;
the slope towards the nut-tree hedge and spring. Several climates in one
field: the wintry ridge over which leaves were always driving in all four
seasons of the year; the level sunny plain and fallen cromlech still tall
enough for a gnomon and to cast its shadow in the treeless drought; the
moist, warm, grassy depression; the lotus-grown slope, warm and dry.

If you have been living in one house in the country for some time, and
then go on a visit to another, though hardly half a mile distant, you
will find a change in the air, the feeling, and tone of the place. It is
close by, but it is not the same. To discover these minute differences,
which make one locality healthy and home happy, and the next adjoining
unhealthy, the Chinese have invented the science of Feng-shui, spying
about with cabalistic mystery, casting the horoscope of an acre. There is
something in all superstitions; they are often the foundation of science.
Superstition having made the discovery, science composes a lecture on the
reason why, and claims the credit. Bird's-foot lotus means a fortunate
spot, dry, warm--so far as soil is concerned. If you were going to live
out of doors, you might safely build your kibitka where you found it.
Wandering with the pictured flower-book, just purchased, over the windy
ridge where last year's skeleton leaves, blown out from the alder copse
below, came on with grasshopper motion--lifted and laid down by the wind,
lifted and laid down--I sat on the sward of the sheltered slope, and
instantly recognised the orange-red claws of the flower beside me. That
was the first; and this very morning, I dread to consider how many years
afterwards, I found a plant on a wall which I do not know. I shall have
to trace out its genealogy and emblazon its shield. So many years and
still only at the beginning--the beginning, too, of the beginning--for
as yet I have not thought of the garden or conservatory flowers (which
are wild flowers somewhere), or of the tropics, or the prairies.

The great stone of the fallen cromlech, crouching down afar off in the
plain behind me, cast its shadow in the sunny morn as it had done, so
many summers, for centuries--for thousands of years: worn white by the
endless sunbeams--the ceaseless flood of light--the sunbeams of
centuries, the impalpable beams polishing and grinding like rushing
water: silent, yet witnessing of the Past; shadowing the Present on the
dial of the field: a mere dull stone; but what is it the mind will not
employ to express to itself its own thoughts?

There was a hollow near in which hundreds of skeleton leaves had settled,
a stage on their journey from the alder copse, so thick as to cover the
thin grass, and at the side of the hollow a wasp's nest had been torn out
by a badger. On the soft and spreading sand thrown out from his burrow
the print of his foot looked as large as an elephant might make. The wild
animals of our fields are so small that the badger's foot seemed foreign
in its size, calling up thought of the great game of distant forests. He
was a bold badger to make his burrow there in the open warren,
unprotected by park walls or preserve laws, where every one might see who
chose. I never saw him by daylight: that they do get about in daytime is,
however, certain, for one was shot in Surrey recently by sportsmen; they
say he weighed forty pounds.

In the mind all things are written in pictures--there is no alphabetical
combination of letters and words; all things are pictures and symbols.
The bird's-foot lotus is the picture to me of sunshine and summer, and of
that summer in the heart which is known only in youth, and then not
alone. No words could write that feeling: the bird's-foot lotus writes
it.

When the efforts to photograph began, the difficulty was to fix the scene
thrown by the lens upon the plate. There the view appeared perfect to the
least of details, worked out by the sun, and made as complete in
miniature as that he shone upon in nature. But it faded like the shadows
as the summer sun declines. Have you watched them in the fields among the
flowers?--the deep strong mark of the noonday shadow of a tree such as
the pen makes drawn heavily on the paper; gradually it loses its darkness
and becomes paler and thinner at the edge as it lengthens and spreads,
till shadow and grass mingle together. Image after image faded from the
plates, no more to be fixed than the reflection in water of the trees by
the shore. Memory, like the sun, paints to me bright pictures of the
golden summer time of lotus; I can see them, but how shall I fix them for
you? By no process can that be accomplished. It is like a story that
cannot be told because he who knows it is tongue-tied and dumb. Motions
of hands, wavings and gestures, rudely convey the framework, but the
finish is not there.

To-day, and day after day, fresh pictures are coloured instantaneously in
the retina as bright and perfect in detail and hue. This very power is
often, I think, the cause of pain to me. To see so clearly is to value so
highly and to feel too deeply. The smallest of the pencilled branches of
the bare ash-tree drawn distinctly against the winter sky, waving lines
one within the other, yet following and partly parallel, reproducing in
the curve of the twig the curve of the great trunk; is it not a pleasure
to trace each to its ending? The raindrops as they slide from leaf to
leaf in June, the balmy shower that reperfumes each wild flower and green
thing, drops lit with the sun, and falling to the chorus of the refreshed
birds; is not this beautiful to see? On the grasses tall and heavy the
purplish blue pollen, a shimmering dust, sown broadcast over the ripening
meadow from July's warm hand--the bluish pollen, the lilac pollen of the
grasses, a delicate mist of blue floating on the surface, has always been
an especial delight to me. Finches shake it from the stalks as they rise.
No day, no hour of summer, no step but brings new mazes--there is no word
to express design without plan, and these designs of flower and leaf and
colours of the sun cannot be reduced to set order. The eye is for ever
drawn onward and finds no end. To see these always so sharply, wet and
fresh, is almost too much sometimes for the wearied yet insatiate eye. I
am obliged to turn away--to shut my eyes and say I will not see, I will
not observe; I will concentrate my mind on my own little path of life,
and steadily gaze downwards. In vain. Who can do so? who can care alone
for his or her petty trifles of existence, that has once entered amongst
the wild flowers? How shall I shut out the sun? Shall I deny the
constellations of the night? They are there; the Mystery is for ever
about us--the question, the hope, the aspiration cannot be put out. So
that it is almost a pain not to be able to cease observing and tracing
the untraceable maze of beauty.

Blue veronica was the next identified, sometimes called germander
speedwell, sometimes bird's-eye, whose leaves are so plain and petals so
blue. Many names increase the trouble of identification, and confusion is
made certain by the use of various systems of classification. The flower
itself I knew, its name I could not be sure of--not even from the
illustration, which was incorrectly coloured; the central white spot of
the flower was reddish in the plate. This incorrect colouring spoils much
of the flower-picturing done; pictures of flowers and birds are rarely
accurate unless hand-painted. Any one else, however, would have been
quite satisfied that the identification was right. I was too desirous to
be correct, too conscientious, and thus a summer went by with little
progress. If you really wish to identify with certainty, and have no
botanist friend and no _magnum opus_ of Sowerby to refer to, it is very
difficult indeed to be quite sure. There was no Sowerby, no Bentham, no
botanist friend--no one even to give the common country names; for it is
a curious fact that the country people of the time rarely know the names
put down as the vernacular for flowers in the books.

No one there could tell me the name of the marsh-marigold which grew
thickly in the water-meadows--"A sort of big buttercup," that was all
they knew. Commonest of common plants is the "sauce alone"--in every
hedge, on every bank, the whitish-green leaf is found--yet _I_ could not
make certain of it. If some one tells you a plant, you know it at once
and never forget it, but to learn it from a book is another matter; it
does not at once take root in the mind, it has to be seen several times
before you are satisfied--you waver in your convictions. The leaves were
described as large and heart-shaped, and to remain green (at the ground)
through the winter; but the colour of the flower was omitted, though it
was stated that the petals of the hedge-mustard were yellow. The plant
that seemed to me to be probably "sauce alone" had leaves somewhat
heart-shaped, but so confusing is _partial_ description that I began to
think I had hit on "ramsons" instead of "sauce alone," especially as
ramsons was said to be a very common plant. So it is in some counties,
but, as I afterwards found, there was not a plant of ramsons, or garlic,
throughout the whole of that district. When, some years afterwards, I saw
a white-flowered plant with leaves like the lily of the valley, smelling
of garlic, in the woods of Somerset, I recognised It immediately. The
plants that are really common--common everywhere--are not numerous, and
if you are studying you must be careful to understand that word locally.
My "sauce alone" identification was right; to be right and not certain is
still unsatisfactory.

There shone on the banks white stars among the grass. Petals delicately
white in a whorl of rays--light that had started radiating from a centre
and become fixed--shining among the flowerless green. The slender stem
had grown so fast it had drawn its own root partly out of the ground, and
when I tried to gather it, flower, stem and root came away together. The
wheat was springing, the soft air full of the growth and moisture,
blackbirds whistling, wood-pigeons nesting, young oak-leaves out; a sense
of swelling, sunny fulness in the atmosphere. The plain road was made
beautiful by the advanced boughs that overhung and cast their shadows on
the dust--boughs of ash-green, shadows that lay still, listening to the
nightingale. A place of enchantment in the mornings where was felt the
power of some subtle influence working behind bough and grass and
bird-song. The orange-golden dandelion in the sward was deeply laden with
colour brought to it anew again and again by the ships of the flowers,
the humble-bees--to their quays they come, unlading priceless essences of
sweet odours brought from the East over the green seas of wheat, unlading
priceless colours on the broad dandelion disks, bartering these things
for honey and pollen. Slowly tacking aslant, the pollen ship hums in the
south wind. The little brown wren finds her way through the great thicket
of hawthorn. How does she know her path, hidden by a thousand thousand
leaves? Tangled and crushed together by their own growth, a crown of
thorns hangs over the thrush's nest; thorns for the mother, hope for the
young. Is there a crown of thorns over your heart? A spike has gone deep
enough into mine. The stile looks farther away because boughs have pushed
forward and made it smaller. The willow scarce holds the sap that
tightens the bark and would burst it if it did not enlarge to the
pressure.

Two things can go through the solid oak; the lightning of the clouds that
rends the iron timber, the lightning of the spring--the electricity of
the sunbeams forcing him to stretch forth and lengthen his arms with joy.
Bathed in buttercups to the dewlap, the roan cows standing in the golden
lake watched the hours with calm frontlet; watched the light descending,
the meadows filling, with knowledge of long months of succulent clover.
On their broad brows the year falls gently; their great, beautiful eyes,
which need but a tear or a smile to make them human,--without these,
such eyes, so large and full, seem above human life, eyes of the
immortals enduring without passion,--in these eyes, as a mirror, nature
is reflected.

I came every day to walk slowly up and down the plain road, by the starry
flowers under the ash-green boughs; ash is the coolest, softest green.
The bees went drifting over by my head; as they cleared the hedges they
passed by my ears, the wind singing in their shrill wings. White
tent-walls of cloud--a warm white, being full to overflowing of
sunshine--stretched across from ash-top to ash-top, a cloud-canvas roof,
a tent-palace of the delicious air. For of all things there is none so
sweet as sweet air--one great flower it is, drawn round about, over, and
enclosing, like Aphrodite's arms; as if the dome of the sky were a
bell-flower drooping down over us, and the magical essence of it filling
all the room of the earth. Sweetest of all things is wild-flower air.
Full of their ideal the starry flowers strained upwards on the bank,
striving to keep above the rude grasses that pushed by them; genius has
ever had such a struggle. The plain road was made beautiful by the many
thoughts it gave. I came every morning to stay by the starlit bank.

A friend said, "Why do you go the same road every day? Why not have a
change and walk somewhere else sometimes? Why keep on up and down the
same place?" I could not answer; till then it had not occurred to me that
I did always go one way; as for the reason of it I could not tell; I
continued in my old mind while the summers went away. Not till years
afterwards was I able to see why I went the same round and did not care
for change. I do not want change: I want the same old and loved things,
the same wild-flowers, the same trees and soft ash-green; the
turtle-doves, the blackbirds, the coloured yellowhammer sing, sing,
singing so long as there is light to cast a shadow on the dial, for such
is the measure of his song, and I want them in the same place. Let me
find them morning after morning, the starry-white petals radiating,
striving upwards to their ideal. Let me see the idle shadows resting on
the white dust; let me hear the humble-bees, and stay to look down on the
rich dandelion disk. Let me see the very thistles opening their great
crowns--I should miss the thistles; the reed-grasses hiding the moorhen;
the bryony bine, at first crudely ambitious and lifted by force of
youthful sap straight above the hedgerow to sink of its own weight
presently and progress with crafty tendrils; swifts shot through the air
with outstretched wings like crescent-headed shaftless arrows darted from
the clouds; the chaffinch with a feather in her bill; all the living
staircase of the spring, step by step, upwards to the great gallery of
the summer--let me watch the same succession year by year.

Why, I knew the very dates of them all--the reddening elm, the arum, the
hawthorn leaf, the celandine, the may; the yellow iris of the waters, the
heath of the hillside. The time of the nightingale--the place to hear
the first note; onwards to the drooping fern and the time of the
redwing--the place of his first note, so welcome to the sportsman as the
acorn ripens and the pheasant, come to the age of manhood, feeds himself;
onwards to the shadowless days--the long shadowless winter, for in winter
it is the shadows we miss as much as the light. They lie over the summer
sward, design upon design, dark lace on green and gold; they glorify the
sunlight: they repose on the distant hills like gods upon Olympus;
without shadow, what even is the sun? At the foot of the great cliffs by
the sea you may know this, it is dry glare; mighty ocean is dearer as the
shadows of the clouds sweep over as they sweep over the green corn. Past
the shadowless winter, when it is all shade, and therefore no shadow;
onwards to the first coltsfoot and on to the seed-time again; I knew the
dates of all of them. I did not want change; I wanted the same flowers to
return on the same day, the titlark to rise soaring from the same oak to
fetch down love with a song from heaven to his mate on the nest beneath.
No change, no new thing; if I found a fresh wild-flower in a fresh place,
still it wove at once into the old garland. In vain, the very next year
was different even in the same place--_that_ had been a year of rain,
and the flag flowers were wonderful to see; _this_ was a dry year, and
the flags not half the height, the gold of the flower not so deep; next
year the fatal billhook came and swept away a slow-grown hedge that had
given me crab-blossom in cuckoo-time and hazelnuts in harvest. Never
again the same, even in the same place.

A little feather droops downwards to the ground--a swallow's feather
fuller of miracle than the Pentateuch--how shall that feather be placed
again in the breast where it grew? Nothing twice. Time changes the places
that knew us, and if we go back in after years, still even then it is not
the old spot; the gate swings differently, new thatch has been put on the
old gables, the road has been widened, and the sward the driven sheep
lingered on is gone. Who dares to think then? For faces fade as flowers,
and there is no consolation. So now I am sure I was right in always
walking the same way by the starry flowers striving upwards on a slender
ancestry of stem; I would follow the plain old road to-day if I could.
Let change be far from me; that irresistible change must come is bitter
indeed. Give me the old road, the same flowers--they were only
stitchwort--the old succession of days and garland, ever weaving into it
fresh wild-flowers from far and near. Fetch them from distant mountains,
discover them on decaying walls, in unsuspected corners; though never
seen before, still they are the same: there has been a place in the heart
waiting for them.



SUNNY BRIGHTON


Some of the old streets opening out of the King's Road look very pleasant
on a sunny day. They ran to the north, so that the sun over the sea
shines nearly straight up them, and at the farther end, where the houses
close in on higher ground, the deep blue sky descends to the rooftrees.
The old red tiles, the red chimneys, the green jalousies, give some
colour; and beneath there are shadowy corners and archways. They are not
too wide to whisper across, for it is curious that to be interesting a
street must be narrow, and the pavements are but two or three bricks
broad. These pavements are not for the advantage of foot passengers; they
are merely to prevent cart-wheels from grating against the houses. There
is nothing ancient or carved in these streets, they are but moderately
old, yet turning from the illuminated sea it is pleasant to glance up
them as you pass, in their stillness and shadow, lying outside the
inconsiderate throng walking to and fro, and contrasting in their
irregularity with the set facades of the front. Opposite, across the
King's Road, the mastheads of the fishing boats on the beach just rise
above the rails of the cliff, tipped with fluttering pennants, or
fish-shaped vanes changing to the wind. They have a pulley at the end of
a curved piece of iron for hauling up the lantern to the top of the mast
when trawling; this thin curve, with a dot at the extremity surmounting
the straight and rigid mast, suits the artist's pencil. The gold-plate
shop--there is a bust of Psyche in the doorway--often attracts the eye in
passing; gold and silver plate in large masses is striking, and it is a
very good place to stand a minute and watch the passers-by.

It is a Piccadilly crowd by the sea-exactly the same style of people you
meet in Piccadilly, but freer in dress, and particularly in hats. All
fashionable Brighton parades the King's Road twice a day, morning and
afternoon, always on the side of the shops. The route is up and down the
King's Road as far as Preston Street, back again and up East Street.
Riding and driving Brighton extends its Rotten Row sometimes to Third
Avenue, Hove. These well-dressed and leading people never look at the
sea. Watching by the gold-plate shop you will not observe a single glance
in the direction of the sea, beautiful as it is, gleaming under the
sunlight. They do not take the slightest interest in sea, or sun, or sky,
or the fresh breeze calling white horses from the deep. Their pursuits
are purely "social," and neither ladies nor gentlemen ever go on the
beach or lie where the surge comes to the feet. The beach is ignored; it
is almost, perhaps quite vulgar; or rather it is entirely outside the
pale. No one rows, very few sail; the sea is not "the thing" in Brighton,
which is the least nautical of seaside places. There is more talk of
horses.

The wind coming up the cliff seems to bring with it whole armfuls of
sunshine, and to throw the warmth and light against you as you linger.
The walls and glass reflect the light and push back the wind in puffs and
eddies; the awning flutters; light and wind spring upwards from the
pavement; the sky is richly blue against the parapets overhead; there are
houses on one side, but on the other open space and sea, and dim clouds
in the extreme distance. The atmosphere is full of light, and gives a
sense of liveliness! every atom of it is in motion. How delicate are the
fore legs of these thoroughbred horses passing! Small and slender, the
hoof, as the limb rises, seems to hang by a thread, yet there is strength
and speed in those sinews. Strength is often associated with size, with
the mighty flank, the round barrel, the great shoulder. But I marvel more
at the manner in which that strength is conveyed through these slender
sinews; the huge brawn and breadth of flesh all depend upon these little
cords. It is at these junctions that the wonder of life is most evident.
The succession of well-shaped horses, overtaking and passing, crossing,
meeting, their high-raised heads and action increase the impression of
pleasant movement. Quick wheels, sometimes a tandem, or a painted coach,
towering over the line,--so rolls the procession of busy pleasure. There
is colour in hat and bonnet, feathers, flowers, and mantles, not
brilliant but rapidly changing, and in that sense bright. Faces on which
the sun shines and the wind blows whether cared for or not, and lit up
thereby; faces seen for a moment and immediately followed by others as
interesting; a flowing gallery of portraits; all life, life! Waiting
unobserved under the awning, occasionally, too, I hear voices as the
throng goes by on the pavement--pleasant tones of people chatting and
the human sunshine of laughter. The atmosphere is full of movement, full
of light, and life streams to and fro.

Yonder, over the road, a row of fishermen lean against the rails of the
cliff, some with their backs to the sea, some facing it. "The cliff" is
rather a misnomer, it is more like a sea-wall in height. This row of
stout men in blue jerseys, or copper-hued tan frocks, seems to be always
there, always waiting for the tide--or nothing. Each has his particular
position; one, shorter than the rest, leans with his elbows backwards on
the low rail; another hangs over and looks down at the site of the fish
market; an older man stands upright, and from long habit looks steadily
out to sea. They have their hands in their pockets; they appear fat and
jolly, as round as the curves of their smacks drawn up on the beach
beneath them. They are of such that "sleep o' nights;" no anxious
ambition disturbs their placidity. No man in this world knows how to
absolutely do--nothing, like a fisherman. Sometimes he turns round,
sometimes he does not, that is all. The sun shines, the breeze comes up
the cliff, far away a French fishing lugger is busy enough. The boats on
the beach are idle, and swarms of boys are climbing over them, swinging
on a rope from the bowsprit, or playing at marbles under the cliff.
Bigger boys collect under the lee of a smack, and do nothing cheerfully.
The fashionable throng hastens to and fro, but the row leaning against
the railings do not stir.

Doleful tales they have to tell any one who inquires about the fishing.
There have been "no herrings" these two years. One man went out with his
smack, and after working for hours returned with _one sole_. I can never
get this one sole out of my mind when I see the row by the rails. While
the fisherman was telling me this woeful story, I fancied I heard voices
from a crowd of the bigger boys collected under a smack, voices that
said, "Ho! ho! Go on! you're kidding the man!" Is there much "kidding" in
this business of fish? Another man told me (but he was not a smack
proprietor) that L50, L70, or L80 was a common night's catch. Some
people say that the smacks never put to sea until the men have spent
every shilling they have got, and are obliged to sail. If truth lies at
the bottom of a well, it is the well of a fishing boat, for there is
nothing so hard to get at as the truth about fish. At the time when
society was pluming itself on the capital results attained by the
Fisheries Exhibition in London, and gentlemen described in the papers how
they had been to market and purchased cod at sixpence a pound, one
shilling and eightpence a pound was the price in the Brighton
fishmongers' shops, close to the sea. Not the least effect was produced
in Brighton; fish remains at precisely the same price as before all this
ridiculous trumpeting. But while the fishmongers charge twopence each for
fresh herrings, the old women bring them to the door at sixteen a
shilling. The poor who live in the old part of Brighton, near the
markets, use great quantities of the smaller and cheaper fish, and their
children weary of the taste to such a degree that when the girls go out
to service they ask to be excused from eating it.

The fishermen say they can often find a better market by sending their
fish to Paris; much of the fish caught off Brighton goes there. It is
fifty miles to London, and 250 to Paris; how then can this be? Fish
somehow slip through ordinary rules, being slimy of surface; the maxims
of the writers on demand and supply are quite ignored, and there is no
groping to the bottom of this well of truth.

Just at the corner of some of the old streets that come down to the
King's Road one or two old fishermen often stand. The front one props
himself against the very edge of the buildings, and peers round into the
broad sunlit thoroughfare; his brown copper frock makes a distinct patch
of colour at the edge of the house. There is nothing in common between
him and the moving throng: he is quite separate and belongs to another
race; he has come down from the shadow of the old street, and his
copper-hued frock might have come out of the last century.

The fishing-boats and the fishing, the nets, and all the fishing work are
a great ornament to Brighton. They are real; there is something about
them that forms a link with the facts of the sea, with the forces of the
tides and winds, and the sunlight gleaming on the white crests of the
waves. They speak to thoughts lurking in the mind; they float between
life and death as with a billow on either hand; their anchors go down to
the roots of existence. This is real work, real labour of man, to draw
forth food from the deep as the plough draws it from the earth. It is in
utter contrast to the artificial work--the feathers, the jewellery, the
writing at desks of the town. The writings of a thousand clerks, the busy
factory work, the trimmings and feathers, and counter attendance do not
touch the real. They are all artificial. For food you must still go to
the earth and to the sea, as in primeval days. Where would your thousand
clerks, your trimmers, and counter-salesmen be without a loaf of bread,
without meat, without fish? The old brown sails and the nets, the anchors
and tarry ropes, go straight to nature. You do not care for nature now?
Well! all I can say is, you will have to go to nature one day--when you
die: you will find nature very real then. I rede you to recognise the
sunlight and the sea, the flowers and woods _now_.

I like to go down on the beach among the fishing-boats, and to recline on
the shingle by a smack when the wind comes gently from the west, and the
low wave breaks but a few yards from my feet. I like the occasional
passing scent of pitch: they are melting it close by. I confess I like
tar: one's hands smell nice after touching ropes. It is more like home
down on the beach here; the men are doing something real, sometimes there
is the clink of a hammer; behind me there is a screen of brown net, in
which rents are being repaired; a big rope yonder stretches as the horse
goes round, and the heavy smack is drawn slowly up over the pebbles. The
full curves of the rounded bows beside me are pleasant to the eye, as any
curve is that recalls those of woman. Mastheads stand up against the sky,
and a loose rope swings as the breeze strikes it; a veer of the wind
brings a puff of smoke from the funnel of a cabin, where some one is
cooking, but it is not disagreeable, like smoke from a house chimney-pot;
another veer carries it away again,--depend upon it the simplest thing
cooked there is nice. Shingle rattles as it is shovelled up for
ballast--the sound of labour makes me more comfortably lazy. They are not
in a hurry, nor "chivy" over their work either; the tides rise and fall
slowly, and they work in correspondence. No infernal fidget and fuss.
Wonder how long it would take me to pitch a pebble so as to lodge on the
top of that large brown pebble there? I try, once now and then.

Far out over the sea there is a peculiar bank of clouds. I was always
fond of watching clouds; these do not move much. In my pocket-book I see
I have several notes about these peculiar sea-clouds. They form a band
not far above the horizon, not very thick but elongated laterally. The
upper edge is curled or wavy, not so heavily as what is called
mountainous, not in the least threatening; this edge is white. The body
of the vapour is a little darker, either because thicker, or because the
light is reflected at a different angle. But it is the lower edge which
is singular: in direct contrast with the curled or wavy edge above, the
under edge is perfectly straight and parallel to the line of the horizon.
It looks as if the level of the sea made this under line. This bank moves
very slowly--scarcely perceptibly--but in course of hours rises, and as
it rises spreads, when the extremities break off in detached pieces, and
these gradually vanish. Sometimes when travelling I have pointed out the
direction of the sea, feeling sure it was there, and not far off, though
invisible, on account of the appearance of the clouds, whose under edge
was cut across so straight. When this peculiar bank appears at Brighton
it is an almost certain sign of continued fine weather, and I have
noticed the same thing elsewhere; once particularly it remained fine
after this appearance despite every threat the sky could offer of a
storm. All the threats came to nothing for three weeks, not even thunder
and lightning could break it up,--"deceitful flashes," as the Arabs say;
for, like the sons of the desert, just then the farmers longed for rain
on their parched fields. To me, while on the beach among the boats, the
value of these clouds lies in their slowness of movement, and consequent
effect in soothing the mind. Outside the hurry and drive of life a rest
comes through the calm of nature. As the swell of the sea carries up the
pebbles, and arranges the largest farthest inland, where they accumulate
and stay unmoved, so the drifting of the clouds, and the touch of the
wind, the sound of the surge, arrange the molecules of the mind in still
layers. It is then that a dream fills it, and a dream is sometimes better
than the best reality. Laugh at the idea of dreaming where there is an
odour of tar if you like, but you see it is outside intolerable
civilisation. It is a hundred miles from the King's Road, though but just
under it.

There is a scheme on foot for planking over the ocean, beginning at the
bottom of West Street. An immense central pier is proposed, which would
occupy the only available site for beaching the smacks. If carried out,
the whole fishing industry must leave Brighton,--to the fishermen the
injury would be beyond compensation, and the aspect of Brighton itself
would be destroyed. Brighton ought to rise in revolt against it.

All Brighton chimney-pots are put on with giant cement, in order to bear
the strain of the tremendous winds rushing up from the sea. Heavy as the
gales are, they seldom do much mischief to the roofs, such as are
recorded inland. On the King's Road a plate-glass window is now and then
blown in, so that on hurricane days the shutters are generally half shut.
It is said that the wind gets between the iron shutters and the plate
glass and shakes the windows loose. The heaviest waves roll in by the
West Pier, and at the bottom of East Street. Both sides of the West Pier
are washed by larger waves than can be seen all along the coast from the
Quarter Deck. Great rollers come in at the concrete groyne at the foot of
East Street. Exposed as the coast is, the waves do not convey so intense
an idea of wildness, confusion, and power as they do at Dover. To see
waves in their full vigour go to the Admiralty Pier and watch the seas
broken by the granite wall. Windy Brighton has not an inch of shelter
anywhere in a gale, and the salt rain driven by the wind penetrates the
thickest coat. The windiest spot is at the corner of Second Avenue, Hove;
the wind just there is almost enough to choke those who face it. Double
windows--Russian fashion--are common all along the sea-front, and are
needed.

After a gale, when the wind changes, as it usually does, it is pleasant
to see the ships work in to the verge of the shore. The sea is turbid and
yellow with sand beaten up by the recent billows,--this yellowness
extends outwards to a certain line, and is there succeeded by the green
of clearer water. Beyond this again the surface looks dark, as if still
half angry, and clouds hang over it, both to retire from the strife. As
bees come out of their hives when the rain ceases and the sun shines, so
the vessels which have been lying-to in harbour, or under shelter of
promontories, are now eagerly making their way down Channel, and, in
order to get as long a tack and as much advantage as possible, they are
brought to the edge of the shallow water. Sometimes fifteen or twenty or
more stand in; all sizes from the ketch to the three-master. The wind is
not strong, but that peculiar drawing breeze which seems to pull a ship
along as if with a tow-rope. The brig stands straight for the beach, with
all sail set; she heels a little, not much; she scarcely heaves to the
swell, and is not checked by meeting waves; she comes almost to the
yellow line of turbid water, when round she goes, and you can see the
sails shiver as the breeze touches them on both surfaces for a moment.
Then again she shows her stern and away she glides, while another
approaches: and all day long they pass. There is always something
shadowy, not exactly unreal, but shadowy about a ship; it seems to carry
a romance, and the imagination fashions a story to the swelling sails.

The bright light of Brighton brings all things into clear relief, giving
them an edge and outline; as steel burns with a flame like wood in
oxygen, so the minute particles of iron in the atmosphere seem to burn
and glow in the sunbeams, and a twofold illumination fills the air.
Coming back to the place after a journey this brilliant light is very
striking, and most new visitors notice it. Even a room with a northern
aspect is full of light, too strong for some eyes, till accustomed to it.
I am a great believer in light--sunlight--and of my free will never let
it be shut out with curtains. Light is essential to life, like air; life
is thought; light is as fresh air to the mind. Brilliant sunshine is
reflected from the houses and fills the streets. The walls of the houses
are clean and less discoloured by the deposit of carbon than usual in
most towns, so that the reflection is stronger from these white surfaces.
Shadow there is none in summer, for the shadows are lit up by diffusion.
Something in the atmosphere throws light down into shaded places as if
from a mirror. Waves beat ceaselessly on the beach, and the undulations
of light flow continuously forwards into the remotest corners. Pure air,
free from suspended matter, lets the light pass freely, and perhaps this
absence of suspended material is the reason that the heat is not so
oppressive as would be supposed considering the glare. Certainly it is
not so hot as London; on going up to town on a July or August day it
seems much hotter there, so much so that one pants for air. Conversely in
winter, London appears much colder, the thick dark atmosphere seems to
increase the bitterness of the easterly winds, and returning to Brighton
is entering a warmer because clearer air. Many complain of the brilliance
of the light; they say the glare is overpowering, but the eyes soon
become acclimatised. This glare is one of the great recommendations of
Brighton; the strong light is evidently one of the causes of its
healthfulness to those who need change. There is no such glowing light
elsewhere along the south coast; these things are very local.

A demand has been made for trees, to plant the streets and turn them into
boulevards for shade, than which nothing could be more foolish. It is the
dryness of the place that gives it its character. After a storm, after
heavy rain for days, in an hour the pavements are not only dry but clean;
no dirt, sticky and greasy, remains. The only dirt in Brighton, for
three-fourths of the year, is that made by the water-carts. Too much
water is used, and a good clean road covered with mud an inch thick in
August; but this is not the fault of Brighton--it is the lack of
observation on the part of the Cadi who ought to have noticed the
wretched condition of ladies' boots when compelled to cross these miry
promenades. Trees are not wanted in Brighton; it is the peculiar glory of
Brighton to be treeless. Trees are the cause of damp, they suck down
moisture, and fill a circle round them with humidity. Places full of
trees are very trying in spring and autumn even to robust people, much
more so to convalescents and delicate persons. Have nothing to do with
trees, if Brighton is to retain its value. Glowing light, dry, clear, and
clean air, general dryness--these are the qualities that rendered
Brighton a sanatorium; light and glow without oppressive moist heat; in
winter a clear cold. Most terrible of all to bear is cold when the
atmosphere is saturated with water. If any reply that trees have no
leaves in winter and so do not condense moisture, I at once deny the
conclusion; they have no leaves, but they condense moisture nevertheless.
This is effected by the minute twigs, thousands of twigs and little
branches, on which the mists condense, and distil in drops. Under a large
tree, in winter, there is often a perfect shower, enough to require an
umbrella, and it lasts for hours. Eastbourne is a pleasant place, but
visit Eastbourne, which is proud of its trees, in October, and feel the
damp fallen leaves under your feet, and you would prefer no trees.

Let nothing check the descent of those glorious beams of sunlight which
fall at Brighton. Watch the pebbles on the beach; the foam runs up and
wets them, almost before it can slip back the sunshine has dried them
again. So they are alternately wetted and dried. Bitter sea and glowing
light, bright clear air, dry as dry,--that describes the place. Spain is
the country of sunlight, burning sunlight; Brighton is a Spanish town in
England, a Seville. Very bright colours can be worn in summer because of
this powerful light; the brightest are scarcely noticed, for they seem to
be in concert with the sunshine. Is it difficult to paint in so strong a
light? Pictures in summer look dull and out of tune when this Seville sun
is shining. Artificial colours of the palette cannot live in it. As a
race we do not seem to care much for colour or art--I mean in the common
things of daily life--else a great deal of colour might be effectively
used in Brighton in decorating houses and woodwork. Much more colour
might be put in the windows, brighter flowers and curtains; more, too,
inside the rooms; the sober hues of London furniture and carpets are not
in accord with Brighton light. Gold and ruby and blue, the blue of
transparent glass, or purple, might be introduced, and the romance of
colour freely indulged. At high tide of summer Spanish mantillas, Spanish
fans, would not be out of place in the open air. No tint is too
bright--scarlet, cardinal, anything the imagination fancies; the
brightest parasol is a matter of course. Stand, for instance, by the West
Pier, on the Esplanade, looking east on a full-lit August day. The sea is
blue, streaked with green, and is stilled with heat; the low undulations
can scarcely rise and fall for somnolence. The distant cliffs are white;
the houses yellowish-white; the sky blue, more blue than fabled Italy.
Light pours down, and the bitter salt sea wets the pebbles; to look at
them makes the mouth dry, in the unconscious recollection of the saltness
and bitterness. The flags droop, the sails of the fishing-boats hang
idle; the land and the sea are conquered by the great light of the sun.

Some people become famous by being always in one attitude. Meet them when
you will, they have invariably got an arm--the same arm--crossed over the
breast, and the hand thrust in between the buttons of the coat to support
it. Morning, noon, or evening, in the street, the carriage, sitting,
reading the paper, always the same attitude; thus they achieve social
distinction; it takes the place of a medal or the red ribbon. What is a
general or a famous orator compared to a man always in the same attitude?
Simply nobody, nobody knows him, everybody knows the mono-attitude man.
Some people make their mark by invariably wearing the same short pilot
coat. Doubtless it has been many times renewed, still it is the same
coat. In winter it is thick, in summer thin, but identical in cut and
colour. Some people sit at the same window of the reading-room at the
same hour every day, all the year round. This is the way to become marked
and famous; winning a battle is nothing to it. When it was arranged that
a military band should play on the Brunswick Lawns, it became the fashion
to stop carriages in the road and listen to it. Frequently there were
carriages four deep, while the gale blew the music out to sea and no one
heard a note. Still they sat content.

There are more handsome women in Brighton than anywhere else in the
world. They are so common that gradually the standard of taste in the
mind rises, and good-looking women who would be admired in other places
pass by without notice. Where all the flowers are roses, you do not see a
rose. They are all plump, not to say fat, which would be rude; very
plump, and have the glow and bloom of youth upon the cheeks. They do not
suffer from "pernicious anaemia," that evil bloodlessness which London
physicians are not unfrequently called upon to cure, when the cheeks are
white as paper and have to be rosied with minute doses of arsenic. They
extract their arsenic from the air. The way they step and the carriage of
the form show how full they are of life and spirits. Sarah Bernhardt will
not come to Brighton if she can help it, lest she should lose that high
art angularity and slipperiness of shape which suits her _role_. Dresses
seem always to fit well, because people somehow expand to them. It is
pleasant to see the girls walk, because the limbs do not drag, the feet
are lifted gaily and with ease. Horse-exercise adds a deeper glow to the
face; they ride up on the Downs first, out of pure cunning, for the air
there is certain to impart a freshness to the features like dew on a
flower, and then return and walk their horses to and fro the King's Road,
certain of admiration. However often these tricks are played, they are
always successful. Those philanthropic folk who want to reform women's
dress, and call upon the world to observe how the present style contracts
the chest, and forces the organs of the body out of place (what a queer
expression it seems, "organs"!) have not a chance in Brighton. Girls lace
tight and "go in" for the tip of the fashion, yet they bloom and flourish
as green bay trees, and do not find their skirts any obstacle in walking
or tennis. The horse-riding that goes on is a thing to be chronicled;
they are always on horseback, and you may depend upon it that it is
better for them than all the gymnastic exercises ever invented. The
liability to strain, and even serious internal injury, which is incurred
in gymnastic exercises, ought to induce sensible people to be extremely
careful how they permit their daughters to sacrifice themselves on this
scientific altar. Buy them horses to ride, if you want them to enjoy good
health and sound constitutions. Nothing like horses for women. Send the
professors to Suakim, and put the girls on horseback. Whether Brighton
grows handsome girls, or whether they flock there drawn by instinct, or
become lovely by staying there, is an inquiry too difficult to pursue.

There they are, one at least in every group, and you have to walk, as the
Spaniards say, with your beard over your shoulder, continually looking
back at those who have passed. The only antidote known is to get married
before you visit the place, and doubts have been expressed as to its
efficacy. In the south-coast Seville there is nothing done but
heart-breaking; it is so common it is like hammering flints for road
mending; nobody cares if your heart is in pieces. They break hearts on
horseback, and while walking, playing tennis, shopping--actually at
shopping, not to mention parties of every kind. No one knows where the
next danger will be encountered--at the very next corner perhaps.
Feminine garments have an irresistible flutter in the sea-breeze;
feathers have a beckoning motion. No one can be altogether good in
Brighton, and that is the great charm of it. The language of the eyes is
cultivated to a marvellous degree; as we say of dogs, they quite talk
with their eyes. Even when you do not chance to meet an exceptional
beauty, still the plainer women are not plain like the plain women in
other places. The average is higher among them, and they are not so
irredeemably uninteresting. The flash of an eye, the shape of a shoulder,
the colour of the hair--something or other pleases. Women without a
single good feature are often good-looking in New Seville because of an
indescribable style or manner. They catch the charm of the good-looking
by living among them, so that if any young lady desires to acquire the
art of attraction she has only to take train and join them. Delighted
with our protectorate of Paphos, Venus has lately decided to reside on
these shores, Every morning the girls' schools go for their
constitutional walks; there seem no end of these schools--the place has
a garrison of girls, and the same thing is noticeable in their ranks. Too
young to have developed actual loveliness, some in each band distinctly
promise future success. After long residence the people become accustomed
to good looks, and do not see anything especial around them, but on going
away for a few days soon miss these pleasant faces.

In reconstructing Brighton station, one thing was omitted--a balcony from
which to view the arrival and departure of the trains in summer and
autumn. The scene is as lively and interesting as the stage when a good
play is proceeding. So many happy expectant faces, often very beautiful;
such a mingling of colours, and succession of different figures; now a
brunette, now golden hair: it is a stage, only it is real. The bustle,
which is not the careworn anxious haste of business; the rushing to and
fro; the greetings of friends; the smiles; the shifting of the groups,
some coming, and some going--plump and rosy,--it is really charming. One
has a fancy dog, another a bright-bound novel; very many have cavaliers;
and look at the piles of luggage! What dresses, what changes and elegance
concealed therein!--conjurors' trunks out of which wonders will spring.
Can anything look jollier than a cab overgrown with luggage, like huge
barnacles, just starting away with its freight? One can imagine such a
fund of enjoyment on its way in that cab. This happy throng seems to
express something that delights the heart. I often used to walk up to the
station just to see it, and left feeling better.



THE PINE WOOD


There was a humming in the tops of the young pines as if a swarm of bees
were busy at the green cones. They were not visible through the thick
needles, and on listening longer it seemed as if the sound was not
exactly the note of the bee--a slightly different pitch, and the hum was
different, while bees have a habit of working close together. Where there
is one bee there are usually five or six, and the hum is that of a group;
here there only appeared one or two insects to a pine. Nor was the buzz
like that of the humble-bee, for every now and then one came along low
down, flying between the stems, and his note was much deeper. By-and-by,
crossing to the edge of the plantation, where the boughs could be
examined, being within reach, I found it was wasps. A yellow wasp
wandered over the blue-green needles till he found a pair with a drop of
liquid like dew between them. There he fastened himself and sucked at it;
you could see the drop gradually drying up till it was gone. The largest
of these drops were generally between two needles--those of the Scotch
fir or pine grow in pairs--but there were smaller drops on the outside of
other needles. In searching for this exuding turpentine the wasps filled
the whole plantation with the sound of their wings. There must have been
many thousands of them. They caused no inconvenience to any one walking
in the copse, because they were high overhead.

Watching these wasps I found two cocoons of pale yellow silk on a branch
of larch, and by them a green spider. He was quite green--two shades,
lightest on the back, but little lighter than the green larch bough. An
ant had climbed up a pine and over to the extreme end of a bough; she
seemed slow and stupefied in her motions, as if she had drunken of the
turpentine and had lost her intelligence. The soft cones of the larch
could be easily cut down the centre with a penknife, showing the
structure of the cone and the seeds inside each scale. It is for these
seeds that birds frequent the fir copses, shearing off the scales with
their beaks. One larch cone had still the tuft at the top--a pineapple in
miniature. The loudest sound in the wood was the humming in the trees;
there was no wind, no sunshine; a summer day, still and shadowy, under
large clouds high up. To this low humming the sense of hearing soon
became accustomed, and it served but to render the silence deeper. In
time, as I sat waiting and listening, there came the faintest far-off
song of a bird away in the trees; the merest thin upstroke of sound,
slight in structure, the echo of the strong spring singing. This was the
summer repetition, dying away. A willow-wren still remembered his love,
and whispered about it to the silent fir tops, as in after days we turn
over the pages of letters, withered as leaves, and sigh. So gentle, so
low, so tender a song the willow-wren sang that it could scarce be known
as the voice of a bird, but was like that of some yet more delicate
creature with the heart of a woman.

A butterfly with folded wings clung to a stalk of grass; upon the under
side of his wing thus exposed there were buff spots, and dark dots and
streaks drawn on the finest ground of pearl-grey, through which there
came a tint of blue; there was a blue, too, shut up between the wings,
visible at the edges. The spots, and dots, and streaks were not exactly
the same on each wing; at first sight they appeared similar, but, on
comparing one with the other, differences could be traced. The pattern
was not mechanical; it was hand-painted by Nature, and the painter's eye
and fingers varied in their work.

How fond Nature is of spot-markings!--the wings of butterflies, the
feathers of birds, the surface of eggs, the leaves and petals of plants
are constantly spotted; so, too, fish--as trout. From the wing of the
butterfly I looked involuntarily at the foxglove I had just gathered;
inside, the bells were thickly spotted--dots and dustings that might have
been transferred to a butterfly's wing. The spotted meadow-orchis; the
brown dots on the cowslips; brown, black, greenish, reddish dots and
spots and dustings on the eggs of the finches, the whitethroats, and so
many others--some of the spots seem as if they had been splashed on and
had run into short streaks, some mottled, some gathered together at the
end; all spots, dots, dustings of minute specks, mottlings, and irregular
markings. The histories, the stories, the library of knowledge contained
in those signs! It was thought a wonderful thing when at last the strange
inscriptions of Assyria were read, made of nail-headed characters whose
sound was lost; it was thought a triumph when the yet older hieroglyphics
of Egypt were compelled to give up their messages, and the world hoped
that we should know the secrets of life. That hope was disappointed;
there was nothing in the records but superstition and useless ritual. But
here we go back to the beginning; the antiquity of Egypt is nothing to
the age of these signs--they date from unfathomable time. In them the sun
has written his commands, and the wind inscribed deep thought. They were
before superstition began; they were composed in the old, old world, when
the Immortals walked on earth. They have been handed down thousands upon
thousands of years to tell us that to-day we are still in the presence of
the heavenly visitants, if only we will give up the soul to these pure
influences. The language in which they are written has no alphabet, and
cannot be reduced to order. It can only be understood by the heart and
spirit. Look down into this foxglove bell and you will know that; look
long and lovingly at this blue butterfly's underwing, and a feeling will
rise to your consciousness.

Some time passed, but the butterfly did not move; a touch presently
disturbed him, and flutter, flutter went his blue wings, only for a few
seconds, to another grass-stalk, and so on from grass-stalk to
grass-stalk as compelled, a yard flight at most. He would not go farther;
he settled as if it had been night. There was no sunshine, and under the
clouds he had no animation. A swallow went by singing in the air, and as
he flew his forked tail was shut, and but one streak of feathers drawn
past. Though but young trees, there was a coating of fallen needles under
the firs an inch thick, and beneath it the dry earth touched warm. A fern
here and there came up through it, the palest of pale green, quite a
different colour to the same species growing in the hedges away from the
copse. A yellow fungus, streaked with scarlet as if blood had soaked into
it, stood at the foot of a tree occasionally. Black fungi, dry,
shrivelled, and dead, lay fallen about, detached from the places where
they had grown, and crumbling if handled. Still more silent after sunset,
the wood was utterly quiet; the swallows no longer passed twittering, the
willow-wren was gone, there was no hum or rustle; the wood was as silent
as a shadow.

But before the darkness a song and an answer arose in a tree, one bird
singing a few notes and another replying side by side. Two goldfinches
sat on the cross of a larch-fir and sang, looking towards the west, where
the light lingered. High up, the larch-fir boughs with the top shoot form
a cross; on this one goldfinch sat, the other was immediately beneath. At
even the birds often turn to the west as they sing.

Next morning the August sun shone, and the wood was all a-hum with
insects. The wasps were working at the pine boughs high overhead; the
bees by dozens were crowding to the bramble flowers; swarming on them,
they seemed so delighted; humble-bees went wandering among the ferns in
the copse and in the ditches--they sometimes alight on fern--and calling
at every purple heath-blossom, at the purple knapweeds, purple thistles,
and broad handfuls of yellow-weed flowers. Wasp-like flies barred with
yellow suspended themselves in the air between the pine-trunks like hawks
hovering, and suddenly shot themselves a yard forward or to one side, as
if the rapid vibration of their wings while hovering had accumulated
force which drove them as if discharged from a cross-bow. The sun had set
all things in motion.

There was a hum under the oak by the hedge, a hum in the pine wood, a
humming among the heath and the dry grass which heat had browned. The air
was alive and merry with sound, so that the day seemed quite different
and twice as pleasant. Three blue butterflies fluttered in one flowery
corner, the warmth gave them vigour; two had a silvery edging to their
wings, one was brown and blue. The nuts reddening at the tips appeared
ripening like apples in the sunshine. This corner is a favourite with
wild bees and butterflies; if the sun shines they are sure to be found
there at the heath-bloom and tall yellow-weed, and among the dry seeding
bennets or grass-stalks. All things, even butterflies, are local in their
habits. Far up on the hillside the blue green of the pines beneath shone
in the sun--a burnished colour; the high hillside is covered with heath
and heather. Where there are open places a small species of gorse,
scarcely six inches high, is in bloom, the yellow blossom on the
extremity of the stalk.

Some of these gorse plants seemed to have a different flower growing at
the side of the stem, instead of at the extremity. These florets were
cream-coloured, so that it looked like a new species of gorse. On
gathering it to examine the thick-set florets, if was found that a
slender runner or creeper had been torn up with it. Like a thread the
creeper had wound itself round and round the furze, buried in and hidden
by the prickles, and it was this creeper that bore the white or
cream-florets. It was tied round as tightly as thread could be, so that
the florets seemed to start from the stem, deceiving the eye at first. In
some places this parasite plant had grown up the heath and strangled it,
so that the tips turned brown and died. The runners extended in every
direction across the ground, like those of strawberries. One creeper had
climbed up a bennet, or seeding grass-stalk, binding the stalk and a
blade of the grass together, and flowering there. On the ground there
were patches of grey lichen; many of the pillar-like stems were crowned
with a red top. Under a small boulder stone there was an ants' nest.
These boulders, or, as they are called locally, "bowlers," were scattered
about the heath. Many of the lesser stones were spotted with dark dots of
lichen, not unlike a toad.

Thoughtlessly turning over a boulder about nine inches square, lo! there
was subject enough for thinking underneath it--a subject that has been
thought about many thousand years; for this piece of rock had formed the
roof of an ants' nest. The stone had sunk three inches deep into the dry
soil of sand and peaty mould, and in the floor of the hole the ants had
worked out their excavations, which resembled an outline map. The largest
excavation was like England; at the top, or north, they had left a narrow
bridge, an eighth of an inch wide, under which to pass into Scotland, and
from Scotland again another narrow arch led to the Orkney Islands; these
last, however, were dug in the perpendicular side of the hole. In the
corners of these excavations tunnels ran deeper into the ground, and the
ants immediately began hurrying their treasures, the eggs, down into
these cellars. At one angle a tunnel went beneath the heath into further
excavations beneath a second boulder stone. Without, a fern grew, and the
dead dry stems of heather crossed each other.

This discovery led to the turning over of another boulder stone not far
off, and under it there appeared a much more extensive and complete
series of galleries, bridges, cellars and tunnels. In these the whole
life-history of the ant was exposed at a single glance, as if one had
taken off the roofs of a city. One cell contained a dust-like deposit,
another a collection resembling the dust, but now elongated and a little
greenish; a third treasury, much larger, was piled up with yellowish
grains about the size of wheat, each with a black dot on the top, and
looking like minute hop-pockets. Besides these, there was a pure white
substance in a corridor, which the irritated ants seemed particularly
anxious to remove out of sight, and quickly carried away. Among the ants
rushing about there were several with wings; one took flight; one was
seized by a wingless ant and dragged down into a cellar, as if to prevent
its taking wing. A helpless green fly was in the midst, and round the
outside galleries there crept a creature like a spider, seeming to try to
hide itself. If the nest had been formed under glass, it could not have
been more open to view. The stone was carefully replaced.

Below the pine wood on the slope of the hill a plough was already at
work, the crop of peas having been harvested. The four horses came up the
slope, and at the ridge swept round in a fine curve to go back and open a
fresh furrow. As soon as they faced down-hill they paused, well aware of
what had to be done, and the ploughman in a manner knocked his plough to
pieces, putting it together again the opposite way, that the earth he was
about to cut with the share might fall on what he had just turned. With a
piece of iron he hammered the edge of the share, to set it, for the hard
ground had bent the edge, and it did not cut properly. I said his team
looked light; they were not so heavily built as the cart-horses used in
many places. No, he said, they did not want heavy horses. "Dese yer
thick-boned hosses be more clutter-headed over the clots," as he
expressed it, _i.e._ more clumsy or thick-headed over the clods. He
preferred comparatively light cart-horses to step well. In the heat of
the sun the furze-pods kept popping and bursting open; they are often as
full of insects as seeds, which come creeping out. A green and black
lady-bird--exactly like a tortoise--flew on to my hand. Again on the
heath, and the grasshoppers rose at every step, sometimes three or four
springing in as many directions. They were winged, and as soon as they
were up spread their vanes and floated forwards. As the force of the
original hop decreased, the wind took their wings and turned them aside
from the straight course before they fell. Down the dusty road, inches
deep in sand, comes a sulphur butterfly, rushing as quick as if hastening
to a butterfly-fair. If only rare, how valued he would be! His colour is
so evident and visible; he fills the road, being brighter than all, and
for the moment is more than the trees and flowers.

Coming so suddenly over the hedge into the road close to me, he startled
me as if I had been awakened from a dream--I had been thinking it was
August, and woke to find it February--for the sulphur butterfly is the
February pleasure. Between the dark storms and wintry rains there is a
warm sunny interval of a week in February. Away one goes for a walk, and
presently there appears a bright yellow spot among the furze, dancing
along like a flower let loose. It is a sulphur butterfly, who thus comes
before the earliest chiffchaff--before the watch begins for the first
swallow. I call it the February pleasure, as each month has its delight.
So associated as this butterfly is with early spring, to see it again
after months of leaf and flower--after June and July--with the wheat in
shock and the scent of harvest in the land, is startling. The summer,
then, is a dream! It is still winter; but no, here are the trees in leaf,
the nuts reddening, the hum of bees, and dry summer dust on the high wiry
grass. The sulphur butterfly comes twice; there is a second brood; but
there are some facts that are always new and surprising, however well
known. I may say again, if only rare, how this butterfly would be prized!
Along the hedgerow there are several spiders' webs. In the centre they
are drawn inwards, forming a funnel, which goes back a few inches into
the hedge, and at the bottom of this the spider waits. If you look down
the funnel you see his claws at the bottom, ready to run up and seize a
fly.

Sitting in the garden after a walk, it is pleasant to watch the
eave-swallows feeding their young on the wing. The young bird follows the
old one; then they face each other and stay a moment in the air, while
the insect food is transferred from beak to beak; with a loud note they
part. There was a constant warfare between the eave-swallows and the
sparrows frequenting a house where I was staying during the early part of
the summer. The sparrows strove their utmost to get possession of the
nests the swallows built, and there was no peace between them It is
common enough for one or two swallows' nests to be attacked in this way,
but here every nest along the eaves was fought for, and the sparrows
succeeded in conquering many of them. The driven-out swallows after a
while began to build again, and I noticed that more than a pair seemed to
work at the same nest. One nest was worked at by four swallows; often all
four came together and twittered at it.



NATURE ON THE ROOF


Increased activity on the housetop marks the approach of spring and
summer exactly as in the woods and hedges, for the roof has its migrants,
its semi-migrants, and its residents. When the first dandelion is opening
on a sheltered bank, and the pale-blue field veronica flowers in the
waste corner, the whistle of the starling comes from his favourite ledge.
Day by day it is heard more and more, till, when the first green spray
appears on the hawthorn, he visits the roof continually. Besides the
roof-tree and the chimney-pot, he has his own special place, sometimes
under an eave, sometimes between two gables; and as I sit writing, I can
see a pair who have a ledge which slightly projects from the wall between
the eaves and the highest window. This was made by the builder for an
ornament; but my two starlings consider it their own particular
possession. They alight with a sort of half-scream half-whistle just over
the window, flap their wings, and whistle again, run along the ledge to a
spot where there is a gable, and with another note, rise up and enter an
aperture between the slates and the wall. There their nest will be in a
little time, and busy indeed they will be when the young require to be
fed, to and fro the fields and the gable the whole day through; the
busiest and the most useful of birds, for they destroy thousands upon
thousands of insects, and if farmers were wise they would never have one
shot, no matter how the thatch was pulled about.

My pair of starlings were frequently at this ledge last autumn, very late
in autumn, and I suspect they had a winter brood there. The starling does
rear a brood sometimes in the midst of the winter, contrary as that may
seem to our general ideas of natural history. They may be called
roof-residents, as they visit it all the year round; they nest in the
roof, rearing two and sometimes three broods; and use it as their club
and place of meeting. Towards July the young starlings and those that
have for the time at least finished nesting, flock together, and pass the
day in the fields, returning now and then to their old home. These flocks
gradually increase; the starling is so prolific that the flocks become
immense, till in the latter part of the autumn in southern fields it is
common to see a great elm-tree black with them, from the highest bough
downwards, and the noise of their chattering can be heard a long
distance. They roost in firs or in osier-beds. But in the blackest days
of winter, when frost binds the ground hard as iron, the starlings return
to the roof almost every day; they do not whistle much, but have a
peculiar chuckling whistle at the instant of alighting. In very hard
weather, especially snow, the starlings find it difficult to obtain a
living, and at such times will come to the premises at the rear, and at
farmhouses where cattle are in the yards, search about among them for
insects.

The whole history of the starling is interesting, but I must here only
mention it as a roof-bird. They are very handsome in their full plumage,
which gleams bronze and green among the darker shades; quick in their
motions, and full of spirit; loaded to the muzzle with energy, and never
still. I hope none of those who are so good as to read what I have
written will ever keep a starling in a cage; the cruelty is extreme. As
for shooting pigeons at a trap, it is mercy in comparison.

Even before the starling whistles much, the sparrows begin to chirp: in
the dead of winter they are silent; but so soon as the warmer winds blow,
if only for a day, they begin to chirp. In January this year I used to
listen to the sparrows chirping, the starlings whistling, and the
chaffinches' "chink, chink" about eight o'clock, or earlier, in the
morning: the first two on the roof; the latter, which is not a roof-bird,
in some garden shrubs. As the spring advances, the sparrows sing--it is a
short song, it is true, but still it is singing--perched at the edge of a
sunny wall. There is not a place about the house where they will not
build--under the eaves, on the roof, anywhere where there is a projection
or shelter, deep in the thatch, under the tiles, in old eave-swallows'
nest. The last place I noticed as a favourite one in towns is on the
half-bricks left projecting in perpendicular rows at the sides of
unfinished houses, Half a dozen nests may be counted at the side of a
house on these bricks; and like the starlings, they rear several broods,
and some are nesting late in the autumn. By degrees as the summer
advances they leave the houses for the corn, and gather in vast flocks,
rivalling those of the starlings. At this time they desert the roofs,
except those who still have nesting duties. In winter and in the
beginning of the new year, they gradually return; migration thus goes on
under the eyes of those who care to notice it. In London, some who fed
sparrows on the roof found that rooks also came for the crumbs placed
out. I sometimes see a sparrow chasing a rook, as if angry, and trying to
drive it away over the roofs where I live, the thief does not retaliate,
but, like a thief, flees from the scene of his guilt. This is not only in
the breeding season, when the rook steals eggs, but in winter. Town
residents are apt to despise the sparrow, seeing him always black; but in
the country the sparrows are as clean as a pink; and in themselves they
are the most animated, clever little creatures.

They are easily tamed. The Parisians are fond of taming them. At a
certain hour in the Tuilleries Gardens, you may see a man perfectly
surrounded with a crowd of sparrows--some perching on his shoulder; some
fluttering in the air immediately before his face; some on the ground
like a tribe of followers; and others on the marble seats. He jerks a
crumb of bread into the air--a sparrow dexterously seizes it as he would
a flying insect; he puts a crumb between his lips--a sparrow takes it out
and feeds from his mouth. Meantime they keep up a constant chirping;
those that are satisfied still stay by and adjust their feathers. He
walks on, giving a little chirp with his mouth, and they follow him along
the path--a cloud about his shoulders, and the rest flying from shrub to
shrub, perching, and then following again. They are all perfectly
clean--a contrast to the London Sparrow. I came across one of these
sparrow-tamers by chance, and was much amused at the scene, which, to any
one not acquainted with birds, appears marvellous; but it is really as
simple as possible, and you can repeat it for yourself if you have
patience, for they are so sharp they soon understand you. They seem to
play at nest-making before they really begin; taking up straws in their
beaks, and carrying them half-way to the roof, then letting the straws
float away; and the same with stray feathers, Neither of these, starlings
nor sparrows, seem to like the dark. Under the roof, between it and the
first ceiling, there is a large open space; if the slates or tiles are
kept in good order, very little light enters, and this space is nearly
dark in daylight. Even if chinks admit a beam of light, it is not enough;
they seldom enter or fly about there, though quite accessible to them.
But if the roof is in bad order, and this space light, they enter freely.
Though nesting in holes, yet they like light. The swallows could easily
go in and make nests upon the beams, but they will not, unless the place
is well lit. They do not like darkness in the daytime.

The swallows bring us the sunbeams on their wings from Africa to fill the
fields with flowers. From the time of the arrival of the first swallow
the flowers take heart; the few and scanty plants that had braved the
earlier cold are succeeded by a constantly enlarging list, till the banks
and lanes are full of them. The chimney-swallow is usually the forerunner
of the three house-swallows; and perhaps no fact in natural history has
been so much studied as the migration of these tender birds. The
commonest things are always the most interesting. In summer there is no
bird so common everywhere as the swallow, and for that reason many
overlook it, though they rush to see a "white elephant." But the deepest
thinkers have spent hours and hours in considering the problem of the
swallow--its migrations, its flight, its habits; great poets have loved
it; great artists and art-writers have curiously studied it. The idea
that it is necessary to seek the wilderness or the thickest woods for
nature is a total mistake; nature it, at home, on the roof, close to
every one. Eave-swallows, or house-martins (easily distinguished by the
white bar across the tail), build sometimes in the shelter of the porches
of old houses.

As you go in or out, the swallows visiting or leaving their nests fly so
closely as almost to brush the face. Swallow means porch-bird, and for
centuries and centuries their nests have been placed in the closest
proximity to man. They might be called man's birds, so attached are they
to the human race. I think the greatest ornament a house can have is the
nest of an eave-swallow under the eaves--far superior to the most
elaborate carving, colouring, or arrangement the architect can devise.
There is no ornament like the swallow's nest; the home of a messenger
between man and the blue heavens, between us and the sunlight, and all
the promise of the sky. The joy of life, the highest and tenderest
feelings, thoughts that soar on the swallow's wings, come to the round
nest under the roof. Not only to-day, not only the hopes of future years,
but all the past dwells there. Year after year the generations and
descent of the swallow have been associated with our homes, and all the
events of successive lives have taken place under their guardianship. The
swallow is the genius of good to a house. Let its nest, then, stay; to me
it seems the extremity of barbarism, or rather stupidity, to knock it
down. I wish I could induce them to build under the eaves of this house;
I would if I could discover some means of communicating with them.

It is a peculiarity of the swallow that you cannot make it afraid of you;
just the reverse of other birds. The swallow does not understand being
repulsed, but comes back again. Even knocking the nest down will not
drive it away, until the stupid process has been repeated several years.
The robin must be coaxed; the sparrow is suspicious, and though easy to
tame, quick to notice the least alarming movement. The swallow will not
be driven away. He has not the slightest fear of man; he flies to his
nest close to the window, under the low eave, or on the beams in the
out-houses, no matter if you are looking on or not. Bold as the starlings
are, they will seldom do this. But in the swallow the instinct of
suspicion is reversed, an instinct of confidence occupies its place. In
addition to the eave-swallow, to which I have chiefly alluded, and the
chimney-swallow, there is the swift, also a roof-bird, and making its
nest in the slates of houses in the midst of towns. These three are
migrants in the fullest sense, and come to our houses over thousands of
miles of land and sea.

Robins frequently visit the roof for insects, especially when it is
thatched; so do wrens; and the latter, after they have peered along, have
a habit of perching at the extreme angle of a gable, or the extreme edge
of a corner, and uttering their song. Finches occasionally fly up to the
roofs of country-houses if shrubberies are near, also in pursuit of
insects; but they are not truly roof-birds. Wagtails perch on roofs; they
often have their nests in the ivy, or creepers trained against walls;
they are quite at borne, and are frequently seen on the ridges of
farmhouses. Tits of several species, particularly the great titmouse and
the blue tit, come to thatch for insects, both in summer and winter. In
some districts where they are common, it is not unusual to see a
goatsucker or fern-owl hawk along close to the eaves in the dusk of the
evening for moths. The white owl is a roof-bird (though not often of the
house), building inside the roof, and sitting there all day in some
shaded corner. They do sometimes take up their residence in the roofs of
outhouses attached to dwellings, but not often nowadays, though still
residing in the roofs of old castles. Jackdaws, again, are roof-birds,
building in the roofs of towers. Bats live in roofs, and hang there
wrapped up in their membranous wings till the evening calls them forth.
They are residents in the full sense, remaining all the year round,
though principally seen in the warmer months; but they are there in the
colder, hidden away, and if the temperature rises, will venture out and
hawk to and fro in the midst of the winter. Tame pigeons and doves hardly
come into this paper, but still it is their habit to use roofs as
tree-tops. Rats and mice creep through the crevices of roofs, and in old
country-houses hold a sort of nightly carnival, racing to and fro under
the roof. Weasels sometimes follow them indoors and up to their roof
strongholds.

When the first warm days of spring sunshine strike against the southern
side of the chimney, sparrows perch there and enjoy it; and again in
autumn, when the general warmth of the atmosphere is declining, they
still find a little pleasant heat there. They make use of the radiation
of heat, as the gardener does who trains his fruit-trees to a wall.
Before the autumn has thinned the leaves, the swallows gather on the
highest ridge of the roof in a row and twitter to each other; they know
the time is approaching when they must depart for another climate. In
winter, many birds seek the thatched roofs to roost. Wrens, tits, and
even blackbirds roost in the holes left by sparrows or starlings.

Every crevice is the home of insects, or used by them for the deposit of
their eggs--under the tiles or slates, where mortar has dropped out
between the bricks, in the holes of thatch, and on the straws. The number
of insects that frequent a large roof must be very great--all the robins,
wrens, bats, and so on, can scarcely affect them; nor the spiders, though
these, too, are numerous. Then there are the moths, and those creeping
creatures that work out of sight, boring their way through the rafters
and beams. Sometimes a sparrow may be seen clinging to the bare wall of
the house; tits do the same thing. It is surprising how they manage to
hold on. They are taking insects from the apertures of the mortar. Where
the slates slope to the south, the sunshine soon heats them, and passing
butterflies alight on the warm surface, and spread out their wings, as if
hovering over the heat. Flies are attracted in crowds sometimes to heated
slates and tiles, and wasps will occasionally pause there. Wasps are
addicted to haunting houses, and, in the autumn, feed on the flies.
Floating germs carried by the air must necessarily lodge in numbers
against roofs; so do dust and invisible particles; and together, these
make the rain-water collected in water-butts after a storm turbid and
dark; and it soon becomes full of living organisms.

Lichen and moss grow on the mortar wherever it has become slightly
disintegrated; and if any mould, however minute, by any means accumulates
between the slates, there, too, they spring up, and even on the slates
themselves. Tiles are often coloured yellow by such growths. On some old
roofs, which have decayed, and upon which detritus has accumulated,
wallflowers may be found; and the house-leek takes capricious root where
it fancies. The stonecrop is the finest of roof-plants, sometimes forming
a broad patch of brilliant yellow. Birds carry up seeds and grains, and
these germinate in moist thatch. Groundsel, for instance, and stray
stalks of wheat, thin and drooping for lack of soil, are sometimes seen
there, besides grasses. Ivy is familiar as a roof-creeper. Some ferns and
the pennywort will grow on the wall close to the roof. A correspondent
tells me that in Wales he found a cottage perfectly roofed with fern--it
grew so thickly as to conceal the roof. Had a painter put this in a
picture, many would have exclaimed: "How fanciful! He must have made it
up; it could never have grown like that!" Not long after receiving my
correspondent's kind letter, I chanced to find a roof near London upon
which the same fern was growing in lines along the tiles. It grew
plentifully, but was not in so flourishing a condition as that found in
Wales. Painters are sometimes accused of calling upon their imagination
when they are really depicting fact, for the ways of nature vary very
much in different localities, and that which may seem impossible in one
place is common enough in another.

Where will not ferns grow? We saw one attached to the under-side of a
glass coal-hole cover; its green could be seen through the thick glass on
which people stepped daily.

Recently, much attention has been paid to the dust which is found on
roofs and ledges at great heights. This meteoric dust, as it is called,
consists of minute particles of iron, which are thought to fall from the
highest part of the atmosphere, or possibly to be attracted to the earth
from space. Lightning usually strikes the roof. The whole subject of
lightning-conductors has been re-opened of late years, there being reason
to think that mistakes have been made in the manner of their erection.
The reason English roofs are high-pitched is not only because of the
rain, that it may shoot off quickly, but on account of snow. Once now and
then there comes a snow-year, and those who live in houses with flat
surfaces anywhere on the roof soon discover how inconvenient they are.
The snow is sure to find its way through, damaging ceilings, and doing
other mischief. Sometimes, in fine summer weather, people remark how
pleasant it would be if the roof were flat, so that it could be used as a
terrace, as it is in warmer climates. But the fact is, the English roof,
although now merely copied and repeated without a thought of the reason
of its shape, grew up from experience of severe winters. Of old, great
care and ingenuity--what we should now call artistic skill--were employed
in contracting the roof. It was not only pleasant to the eye with its
gables, but the woodwork was wonderfully well done. Such roofs may still
be seen on ancient mansions, having endured for centuries. They are
splendid pieces of workmanship, and seen from afar among foliage, are
admired by every one who has the least taste. Draughtsmen and painters
value them highly. No matter whether reproduced on a large canvas or in a
little woodcut, their proportions please. The roof is much neglected in
modern houses; it is either conventional, or it is full indeed of gables,
but gables that do not agree, as it were, with each other--that are
obviously put there on purpose to look artistic, and fail altogether.
Now, the ancient roofs were true works of art, consistent, and yet each
varied to its particular circumstances, and each impressed with the
individuality of the place and of the designer. The finest old roofs were
built of oak or chestnut; the beams are black with age, and, in that
condition, oak is scarcely distinguishable from chestnut.

So the roof has its natural history, its science, and art; it has its
seasons, its migrants and residents, of whom a housetop calendar might be
made. The fine old roofs which have just been mentioned are often
associated with historic events and the rise of families; and the
roof-tree, like the hearth, has a range of proverbs or sayings and
ancient lore to itself. More than one great monarch has been slain by a
tile thrown from the housetop, and numerous other incidents have occurred
in connection with it. The most interesting is the story of the Grecian
mother who, with her infant, was on the roof, when, in a moment of
inattention, the child crept to the edge, and was balanced on the very
verge. To call to it, to touch it, would have insured its destruction;
but the mother, without a second's thought, bared her breast, and the
child eagerly turning to it, was saved!



ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS


I

If any one were to get up about half-past five on an August morning and
look out of an eastern window in the country, he would see the distant
trees almost hidden by a white mist. The tops of the larger groups of
elms would appear above it, and by these the line of the hedgerows could
be traced. Tier after tier they stretch along, rising by degrees on a
gentle slope, the space between filled with haze. Whether there were
corn-fields or meadows under this white cloud he could not tell--a cloud
that might have come down from the sky, leaving it a clear azure. This
morning haze means intense heat in the day. It is hot already, very hot,
for the sun is shining with all his strength, and if you wish the house
to be cool it is time to set the sunblinds.

Roger, the reaper, had slept all night in the cowhouse, lying on the
raised platform of narrow planks put up for cleanliness when the cattle
were there. He had set the wooden window wide open and left the door ajar
when he came stumbling in overnight, long after the late swallows had
settled in their nests in the beams, and the bats had wearied of moth
catching. One of the swallows twittered a little, as much as to say to
his mate, "my love, it is only a reaper, we need not be afraid," and all
was silence and darkness. Roger did not so much as take off his boots,
but flung himself on the boards crash, curled himself up hedgehog fashion
with some old sacks, and immediately began to breathe heavily. He had no
difficulty in sleeping, first because his muscles had been tried to the
utmost, and next because his skin was full to the brim, not of jolly
"good ale and old" but of the very smallest and poorest of wish-washy
beer. In his own words, it "blowed him up till he very nigh bust." Now
the great authorities on dyspepsia, so eagerly studied by the wealthy
folk whose stomachs are deranged, tell us that a very little flatulence
will make the heart beat irregularly and cause the most distressing
symptoms.

Roger had swallowed at least a gallon of a liquid chemically designed,
one might say, on purpose to utterly upset the internal economy. Harvest
beer is probably the vilest drink in the world. The men say it is made by
pouring muddy water into empty casks returned sour from use, and then
brushing them round and round inside with a besom. This liquid leaves a
stickiness on the tongue and a harsh feeling at the back of the mouth
which soon turns to thirst, so that having once drunk a pint the drinker
must go on drinking. The peculiar dryness caused by this beer is not like
any other throat drought--worse than dust, or heat, or thirst from work;
there is no satisfying it. With it there go down the germs of
fermentation, a sour, yeasty, and, as it were, secondary fermentation;
not that kind which is necessary to make beer, but the kind that unmakes
and spoils beer. It is beer rotting and decomposing in the stomach.
Violent diarrhoea often follows, and then the exhaustion thus caused
induces the men to drink more in order to regain the strength necessary
to do their work. The great heat of the sun and the heat of hard labour,
the strain and perspiration, of course try the body and weaken the
digestion. To distend the stomach with half a gallon of this liquor,
expressly compounded to ferment, is about the most murderous thing a man
could do--murderous because it exposes him to the risk of sunstroke. So
vile a drink there is not elsewhere in the world; arrack, and
potato-spirit, and all the other killing extracts of the distiller are
not equal to it. Upon this abominable mess the golden harvest of English
fields is gathered in.

Some people have in consequence endeavoured to induce the harvesters to
accept a money payment in place of beer, and to a certain extent
successfully. Even then, however, they must drink something. Many manage
on weak tea after a fashion, but not so well as the abstainers would have
us think. Others have brewed for their men a miserable stuff in buckets,
an infusion of oatmeal, and got a few to drink it; but English labourers
will never drink oatmeal-water unless they are paid to do it. If they are
paid extra beer-money and oatmeal water is made for them gratis, some
will, of course, imbibe it, especially if they see that thereby they may
obtain little favours from their employer by yielding to his fad. By
drinking the crotchet perhaps they may get a present now and then-food
for themselves, cast-off clothes for their families, and so on. For it is
a remarkable feature of human natural history, the desire to proselytise.
The spectacle of John Bull--jovial John Bull--offering his men a bucket
of oatmeal liquor is not a pleasant one. Such a John Bull ought to be
ashamed of himself.

The truth is the English farmer's man was and is, and will be, a drinker
of beer. Neither tea, nor oatmeal, nor vinegar and water (coolly
recommended by indoor folk) will do for him. His natural constitution
rebels against such "peevish" drink. In winter he wants beer against the
cold and the frosty rime and the heavy raw mist that hangs about the
hollows; in spring and autumn against the rain, and in summer to support
him under the pressure of additional work and prolonged hours. Those who
really wish well to the labourer cannot do better than see that he really
has beer to drink--real beer, genuine brew of malt and hops, a moderate
quantity of which will supply force to his thews and sinews, and will not
intoxicate or injure. If by giving him a small money payment in lieu of
such large quantities you can induce him to be content with a little, so
much the better. If an employer followed that plan, and at the same time
once or twice a day sent out a moderate supply of genuine beer as a gift
to his men, he would do them all the good in the world, and at the same
time obtain for himself their goodwill and hearty assistance, that hearty
work which is worth so much.

Roger breathed heavily in his sleep in the cowhouse, because the vile
stuff he had taken puffed him up and obstructed nature. The tongue in his
open mouth became parched and cracked, swollen and dry; he slept indeed,
but he did not rest; he groaned heavily at times and rolled aside. Once
he awoke choking--he could not swallow, his tongue was so dry and large;
he sat up, swore, and again lay down. The rats in the sties had already
discovered that a man slept in the cowhouse, a place they rarely visited,
as there was nothing there to eat; how they found it out no one knows.
They are clever creatures, the despised rats. They came across in the
night and looked under his bed, supposing that he might have eaten his
bread-and-cheese for supper there, and that fragments might have dropped
between the boards. There were none. They mounted the boards and sniffed
round him; they would have stolen the food from his very pocket if it had
been there. Nor could they find a bundle in a handkerchief, which they
would have gnawn through speedily. Not a scrap of food was there to be
smelt at, so they left him. Roger had indeed gone supperless, as usual;
his supper he had swilled and not eaten. His own fault; he should have
exercised self-control. Well, I don't know; let us consider further
before we judge.

In houses the difficulty often is to get the servants up in the morning;
one cannot wake, and the rest sleep too sound--much the same thing; yet
they have clocks and alarums. The reapers are never behind. Roger got off
his planks, shook himself, went outside the shed, and tightened his
shoelaces in the bright light. His rough hair he just pushed back from
his forehead, and that was his toilet. His dry throat sent him to the
pump, but he did not swallow much of the water--he washed his mouth out,
and that was enough; and so without breakfast he went to his work.
Looking down from the stile on the high ground there seemed to be a white
cloud resting on the valley, through which the tops of the high trees
penetrated; the hedgerows beneath were concealed, and their course could
only be traced by the upper branches of the elms. Under this cloud the
wheat-fields were blotted out; there seemed neither corn nor grass, work
for man nor food for animal; there could be nothing doing there surely.
In the stillness of the August morning, without song of bird, the sun,
shining brilliantly high above the mist, seemed to be the only living
thing, to possess the whole and reign above absolute peace. It is a
curious sight to see the early harvest morn--all hushed under the burning
sun, a morn that you know is full of life and meaning, yet quiet as if
man's foot had never trodden the land. Only the sun is there, rolling on
his endless way.

Roger's head was bound with brass, but had it not been he would not have
observed anything in the aspect of the earth. Had a brazen band been
drawn firmly round his forehead it could not have felt more stupefied.
His eyes blinked in the sunlight; every now and then he stopped to save
himself from staggering; he was not in a condition to think. It would
have mattered not at all if his head had been clear; earth, sky, and sun
were nothing to him; he knew the footpath, and saw that the day would be
fine and hot, and that was sufficient for him, because his eyes had never
been opened.

The reaper had risen early to his labour, but the birds had preceded him
hours. Before the sun was up the swallows had left their beams in the
cowshed and twittered out into the air. The rooks and wood-pigeons and
doves had gone to the corn, the blackbird to the stream, the finch to the
hedgerow, the bees to the heath on the hills, the humble-bees to the
clover in the plain. Butterflies rose from the flowers by the footpath,
and fluttered before him to and fro and round and back again to the place
whence they had been driven. Goldfinches tasting the first thistledown
rose from the corner where the thistles grew thickly. A hundred sparrows
came rushing up into the hedge, suddenly filling the boughs with brown
fruit; they chirped and quarrelled in their talk, and rushed away again
back to the corn as he stepped nearer. The boughs were stripped of their
winged brown berries as quickly as they had grown. Starlings ran before
the cows feeding in the aftermath, so close to their mouths as to seem in
danger of being licked up by their broad tongues. All creatures, from the
tiniest insect upward, were in reality busy under that curtain of
white-heat haze. It looked so still, so quiet, from afar; entering it and
passing among the fields, all that lived was found busy at its long day's
work. Roger did not interest himself in these things, in the wasps that
left the gate as he approached--they were making _papier-mache_ from the
wood of the top bar,--in the bright poppies brushing against his drab
unpolished boots, in the hue of the wheat or the white convolvulus; they
were nothing to him.

Why should they be? His life was work without skill or thought, the work
of the horse, of the crane that lifts stones and timber. His food was
rough, his drink rougher, his lodging dry planks. His books were--none;
his picture-gallery a coloured print at the alehouse--a dog, dead, by a
barrel, "Trust is dead! Bad Pay killed him." Of thought he thought
nothing; of hope his idea was a shilling a week more wages; of any future
for himself of comfort such as even a good cottage can give--of any
future whatever--he had no more conception than the horse in the shafts
of the waggon. A human animal simply in all this, yet if you reckoned
upon him as simply an animal--as has been done these centuries--you would
now be mistaken. But why should he note the colour of the butterfly, the
bright light of the sun, the hue of the wheat? This loveliness gave him
no cheese for breakfast; of beauty in itself, for itself, he had no idea.
How should he? To many of us the harvest--the summer--is a time of joy
in light and colour; to him it was a time for adding yet another crust of
hardness to the thick skin of his hands.

Though the haze looked like a mist it was perfectly dry; the wheat was as
dry as noon; not a speck of dew, and pimpernels wide open for a burning
day. The reaping-machine began to rattle as he came up, and work was
ready for him. At breakfast-time his fellows lent him a quarter of a
loaf, some young onions, and a drink from their tea. He ate little, and
the tea slipped from his hot tongue like water from the bars of a grate;
his tongue was like the heated iron the housemaid tries before using it
on the linen. As the reaping-machine went about the gradually decreasing
square of corn, narrowing it by a broad band each time, the wheat fell
flat on the short stubble. Roger stooped, and, gathering sufficient
together, took a few straws, knotted them to another handful as you might
tie two pieces of string, and twisted the band round the sheaf. He worked
stooping to gather the wheat, bending to tie it in sheaves; stooping,
bending--stooping, bending,--and so across the field. Upon his head and
back the fiery sun poured down the ceaseless and increasing heat of the
August day. His face grew red, his neck black; the drought of the dry
ground rose up and entered his mouth and nostrils, a warm air seemed to
rise from the earth and fill his chest. His body ached from the ferment
of the vile beer, his back ached with stooping, his forehead was bound
tight with a brazen band. They brought some beer at last; it was like the
spring in the desert to him. The vicious liquor--"a hair of the dog that
bit him"--sank down his throat grateful and refreshing to his disordered
palate as if he had drunk the very shadow of green boughs. Good ale would
have seemed nauseous to him at that moment, his taste and stomach
destroyed by so many gallons of this. He was "pulled together," and
worked easier; the slow hours went on, and it was luncheon. He could have
borrowed more food, but he was content instead with a screw of tobacco
for his pipe and his allowance of beer.

They sat in the corner of the field. There were no trees for shade; they
had been cut down as injurious to corn, but there were a few maple bushes
and thin ash sprays, which seemed better than the open. The bushes cast
no shade at all, the sun being so nearly overhead, but they formed a kind
of enclosure, an open-air home, for men seldom sit down if they can help
it on the bare and level plain; they go to the bushes, to the corner, or
even to some hollow. It is not really any advantage; it is habit; or
shall we not rather say that it is nature? Brought back as it were in the
open field to the primitive conditions of life, they resumed the same
instincts that controlled man in the ages past. Ancient man sought the
shelter of trees and banks, of caves and hollows, and so the labourers
under somewhat the same conditions came to the corner where the bushes
grew. There they left their coats and slung up their luncheon-bundles to
the branches; there the children played and took charge of the infants;
there the women had their hearth and hung their kettle over a fire of
sticks.


II


In August the unclouded sun, when there is no wind, shines as fervently
in the harvest-field as in Spain. It is doubtful if the Spanish people
feel the heat so much as our reapers; they have their siesta; their
habits have become attuned to the sun, and it is no special strain upon
them. In India our troops are carefully looked after in the hot weather,
and everything made as easy for them as possible; without care and
special clothing and coverings for the head they could not long endure.
The English simoon of heat drops suddenly on the heads of the harvesters
and finds them entirely unprepared; they have not so much as a cooling
drink ready; they face it, as it were, unarmed. The sun spares not; It is
fire from morn till night. Afar in the town the sun-blinds are up, there
is a tent on the lawn in the shade, people drink claret-cup and use ice;
ice has never been seen in the harvest-field. Indoors they say they are
melting lying on a sofa in a darkened room, made dusky to keep out the
heat. The fire falls straight from the sky on the heads of the
harvesters--men, women, and children--and the white-hot light beats up
again from the dry straw and the hard ground.

The tender flowers endure; the wide petal of the poppy, which withers
between the fingers, lies afloat on the air as the lilies on water,
afloat and open to the weight of the heat. The red pimpernel looks
straight up at the sky from the early morning till its hour of closing in
the afternoon. Pale blue speedwell does not fade; the pale blue stands
the warmth equally with the scarlet. Far in the thick wheat the streaked
convolvulus winds up the stalks, and is not smothered for want of air
though wrapped and circled with corn. Beautiful though they are, they are
bloodless, not sensitive; we have given to them our feelings, they do not
share our pain or pleasure. Heat has gone into the hollow stalks of the
wheat and down the yellow tubes to the roots, drying them in the earth.
Heat has dried the leaves upon the hedge, and they touch rough--dusty
rough, as books touch that have been lying unused; the plants on the bank
are drying up and turning white. Heat has gone down into the cracks of
the ground; the bar of the stile is so dry and powdery in the crevices
that if a reaper chanced to drop a match on it there would seem risk of
fire. The still atmosphere is laden with heat, and does not move in the
corner of the field between the bushes.

Roger the reaper smoked out his tobacco; the children played round and
watched for scraps of food; the women complained of the heat; the men
said nothing. It is seldom that a labourer grumbles much at the weather,
except as interfering with his work. Let the heat increase, so it would
only keep fine. The fire in the sky meant money. Work went on again;
Roger had now to go to another field to pitch--that is, help to load the
waggon; as a young man, that was one of the jobs allotted to him. This
was the reverse. Instead of stooping he had now to strain himself upright
and lift sheaves over his head. His stomach empty of everything but small
ale did not like this any more than his back had liked the other; but
those who work for bare food must not question their employment. Heavily
the day drove on; there was more beer, and again more beer, because it
was desired to clear some fields that evening. Monotonously pitching the
sheaves, Roger laboured by the waggon till the last had been loaded--till
the moon was shining. His brazen forehead was unbound now; in spite of
the beer the work and the perspiration had driven off the aching. He was
weary but well. Nor had he been dull during the day; he had talked and
joked--cumbrously in labourers' fashion--with his fellows. His aches,
his empty stomach, his labour, and the heat had not overcome the vitality
of his spirits. There was life enough left for a little rough play as the
group gathered together and passed out through the gateway. Life enough
left in him to go with the rest to the alehouse; and what else, oh
moralist, would you have done in his place? This, remember, is not a
fancy sketch of rural poetry; this is the reaper's real existence.

He had been in the harvest-field fourteen hours, exposed to the intense
heat, not even shielded by a pith helmet; he had worked the day through
with thew and sinew; he had had for food a little dry bread and a few
onions, for drink a little weak tea and a great deal of small beer. The
moon was now shining in the sky, still bright with sunset colours.
Fourteen hours of sun and labour and hard fare! Now tell him what to do.
To go straight to his plank-bed in the cowhouse; to eat a little more dry
bread, borrow some cheese or greasy bacon, munch it alone, and sit musing
till sleep came--he who had nothing to muse about. I think it would need
a very clever man indeed to invent something for him to do, some way for
him to spend his evening. Read! To recommend a man to read after fourteen
hours' burning sun is indeed a mockery; darn his stockings would be
better. There really is nothing whatsoever that the cleverest and most
benevolent person could suggest. Before any benevolent or well-meaning
suggestions could be effective the preceding circumstances must be
changed--the hours and conditions of labour, everything; and can that be
done? The world has been working these thousands of years, and still it
is the same; with our engines, our electric light, our printing press,
still the coarse labour of the mine, the quarry, the field has to be
carried out by human hands. While that is so, it is useless to recommend
the weary reaper to read. For a man is not a horse: the horse's day's
work is over; taken to his stable he is content, his mind goes no deeper
than the bottom of his manger, and so long as his nose does not feel the
wood, so long as it is met by corn and hay, he will endure happily. But
Roger the reaper is not a horse.

Just as his body needed food and drink, so did his mind require
recreation, and that chiefly consists of conversation. The drinking and
the smoking are in truth but the attributes of the labourer's
public-house evening. It is conversation that draws him thither, just as
it draws men with money in their pockets to the club and the houses of
their friends. Any one can drink or smoke alone; it needs several for
conversation, for company. You pass a public-house--the reaper's
house--in the summer evening. You see a number of men grouped about
trestle-tables out of doors, and others sitting at the open window; there
is an odour of tobacco, a chink of glasses and mugs. You can smell the
tobacco and see the ale; you cannot see the indefinite power which holds
men there--the magnetism of company and conversation. _Their_
conversation, not _your_ conversation; not the last book, the last play;
not saloon conversation; but theirs--talk in which neither you nor any
one of your condition could really join. To us there would seem nothing
at all in that conversation, vapid and subjectless; to them it means
much. We have not been through the same circumstances: our day has been
differently spent, and the same words have therefore a varying value.
Certain it is, that it is conversation that takes men to the
public-house. Had Roger been a horse he would have hastened to borrow
some food, and, having eaten that, would have cast himself at once upon
his rude bed. Not being an animal, though his life and work were animal,
he went with his friends to talk. Let none unjustly condemn him as a
blackguard for that--no, not even though they had seen him at ten o'clock
unsteadily walking to his shed, and guiding himself occasionally with his
hands to save himself from stumbling. He blundered against the door, and
the noise set the swallows on the beams twittering. He reached his
bedstead, and sat down and tried to unlace his boots, but could not. He
threw himself upon the sacks and fell asleep. Such was one twenty-four
hours of harvest-time.

The next and the next, for weeks, were almost exactly similar; now a
little less beer, now a little more; now tying up, now pitching, now
cutting a small field or corner with a fagging-hook. Once now and then
there was a great supper at the farm. Once he fell out with another
fellow, and they had a fight; Roger, however, had had so much ale, and
his opponent so much whisky, that their blows were soft and helpless.
They both fell--that is, they stumbled,--they were picked up, there was
some more beer, and it was settled. One afternoon Roger became suddenly
giddy, and was so ill that he did no more work that day, and very little
on the following. It was something like a sunstroke, but fortunately a
slight attack; on the third day he resumed his place. Continued labour in
the sun, little food and much drink, stomach derangement, in short,
accounted for his illness. Though he resumed his place and worked on, he
was not so well afterwards; the work was more of an effort to him, and
his face lost its fulness, and became drawn and pointed. Still he
laboured, and would not miss an hour, for harvest was coming to an end,
and the extra wages would soon cease. For the first week or so of
haymaking or reaping the men usually get drunk, delighted with the
prospect before them, they then settle down fairly well. Towards the end
they struggle hard to recover lost time and the money spent in ale.

As the last week approached, Roger went up into the village and ordered
the shoemaker to make him a good pair of boots. He paid partly for them
then, and the rest next pay-day. This was a tremendous effort. The
labourer usually pays a shilling at a time, but Roger mistrusted himself.
Harvest was practically over, and after all the labour and the long
hours, the exposure to the sun and the rude lodging, he found he should
scarcely have thirty shillings. With the utmost ordinary care he could
have saved a good lump of money. He was a single man, and his actual keep
cost but little. Many married labourers, who had been forced by hard
necessity to economy, contrived to put by enough to buy clothes for their
families. The single man, with every advantage, hardly had thirty
shillings, and even then it showed extraordinary prudence on his part to
go and purchase a pair of boots for the winter. Very few in his place
would have been as thoughtful as that; they would have got boots somehow
in the end, but not beforehand. This life of animal labour does not grow
the spirit of economy. Not only in farming, but in navvy work, in the
rougher work of factories and mines, the same fact is evident. The man
who labours with thew and sinew at horse labour--crane labour--not for
himself, but for others, is not the man who saves. If he worked for his
own hand possibly he might, no matter how rough his labour and fare; not
while working for another. Roger reached his distant home among the
meadows at last, with one golden half-sovereign in his pocket. That and
his new pair of boots, not yet finished, represented the golden harvest
to him. He lodged with his parents when at home; he was so far fortunate
that he had a bed to go to; therefore in the estimation of his class he
was not badly off. But if we consider his position as regards his own
life we must recognise that he was very badly off indeed, so much
precious time and the strength of his youth having been wasted.

Often it is stated that the harvest wages recoup the labourer for the low
weekly receipts of the year, and if the money be put down in figures with
pen and ink it is so. But in actual fact the pen-and-ink figures do not
represent the true case; these extra figures have been paid for, and gold
may be bought too dear. Roger had paid heavily for his half-sovereign and
his boots; his pinched face did not look as if he had benefited greatly.
His cautious old father, rendered frugal by forty years of labour, had
done fairly well; the young man not at all. The old man, having a
cottage, in a measure worked for his own hand. The young man, with none
but himself to think of, scattered his money to the winds. Is money
earned with such expenditure of force worth the having? Look at the arm
of a woman labouring in the harvest-field--thin, muscular, sinewy, black
almost, it tells of continual strain. After much of this she becomes
pulled out of shape, the neck loses its roundness and shows the sinews,
the chest flattens. In time the women find the strain of it tell
severely. I am not trying to make out a case of special hardship, being
aware that both men, women, and children work as hard and perhaps suffer
more in cities; I am simply describing the realities of rural life behind
the scenes. The golden harvest is the first scene: the golden wheat,
glorious under the summer sun. Bright poppies flower in its depths, and
convolvulus climbs the stalks. Butterflies float slowly over the yellow
surface as they might over a lake of colour. To linger by it, to visit it
day by day, at even to watch the sunset by it, and see it pale under the
changing light, is a delight to the thoughtful mind. There is so much in
the wheat, there are books of meditation in it, it is dear to the heart.
Behind these beautiful aspects comes the reality of human labour--hours
upon hours of heat and strain; there comes the reality of a rude life,
and in the end little enough of gain. The wheat is beautiful, but human
life is labour.



THE MODERN THAMES


I

The wild red deer can never again come down to drink at the Thames in the
dusk of the evening as once they did. While modern civilisation endures,
the larger fauna must necessarily be confined to parks or restrained to
well-marked districts; but for that very reason the lesser creatures of
the wood, the field, and the river should receive the more protection. If
this applies to the secluded country, far from the stir of cities, still
more does it apply to the neighbourhood of London. From a sportsman's
point of view, or from that of a naturalist, the state of the river is
one of chaos. There is no order. The Thames appears free even from the
usual rules which are in force upon every highway. A man may not fire a
gun within a certain distance of a road under a penalty--a law enacted
for the safety of passengers, who were formerly endangered by persons
shooting small birds along the hedges bordering roads. Nor may he shoot
at all, not so much as fire off a pistol (as recently publicly proclaimed
by the Metropolitan police to restrain the use of revolvers), without a
licence. But on the river people do as they choose, and there does not
seem to be any law at all--or at least there is no authority to enforce
it, if it exists. Shooting from boats and from the towing-path is carried
on in utter defiance of the licensing law, of the game law (as applicable
to wild fowl), and of the safety of persons who may be passing. The
moorhens are shot, the kingfishers have been nearly exterminated or
driven away from some parts, the once common black-headed bunting is
comparatively scarce in the more frequented reaches, and if there is
nothing else to shoot at, then the swallows are slaughtered. Some have
even taken to shooting at the rooks in the trees or fields by the river
with small-bore rifles--a most dangerous thing to do. The result is that
the osier-beds on the eyots and by the backwaters--the copses of the
river--are almost devoid of life. A few moorhens creep under the aquatic
grasses and conceal themselves beneath the bushes, water-voles hide among
the flags, but the once extensive host of waterfowl and river life has
been reduced to the smallest limits. Water-fowl cannot breed because they
are shot on the nest, or their eggs taken. As for rarer birds, of course
they have not the slightest chance. The fish have fared better because
they have received the benefit of close seasons, enforced with more or
less vigilance all along the river. They are also protected by
regulations making it illegal to capture them except in a sportsmanlike
manner; snatching, for instance, is unlawful. Riverside proprietors
preserve some reaches, piscatorial societies preserve others, and the
complaint indeed is that the rights of the public have been encroached
upon. The too exclusive preservation of fish is in a measure responsible
for the destruction of water-fowl, which are cleared off preserved places
in order that they may not help themselves to fry or spawn. On the other
hand, the societies may claim to have saved parts of the river from being
entirely deprived of fish, for it is not long since it appeared as if the
stream would be quite cleared out. Large quantities of fish have also
been placed in the river taken from ponds and bodily transported to the
Thames. So that upon the whole the fish have been well looked after of
recent years.

The more striking of the aquatic plants--such as white water-lilies--have
been much diminished in quantity by the constant plucking, and injury is
said to have been done by careless navigation. In things of this kind a
few persons can do a great deal of damage. Two or three men with guns,
and indifferent to the interests of sport or natural history, at work
every day, can clear a long stretch of river of waterfowl, by scaring if
not by actually killing them. Imagine three or four such gentry allowed
to wander at will in a large game preserve--in a week they would totally
destroy it as a preserve. The river, after all, is but a narrow band as
it were, and is easily commanded by a gun. So, too, with fish poachers; a
very few men with nets can quickly empty a good piece of water: and
flowers like water-lilies, which grow only in certain spots, are soon
pulled or spoiled. This aspect of the matter--the immense mischief which
can be effected by a very few persons--should be carefully borne in mind
in framing any regulations. For the mischief done on the river is really
the work of a small number, a mere fraction of the thousands of all
classes who frequent it. Not one in a thousand probably perpetrates any
intentional damage to fish, fowl, or flowers.

As the river above all things is, and ought to be, a place of recreation,
care must be particularly taken that in restraining these practices the
enjoyment of the many be not interfered with. The rational pleasure of
999 people ought not to be checked because the last of the thousand acts
as a blackguard. This point, too, bears upon the question of
steam-launches. A launch can pass as softly and quietly as a skiff
floating with the stream. And there is a good deal to be said on the
other side, for the puntsmen stick themselves very often in the way of
every one else; and if you analyse fishing for minnows from a punt you
will not find it a noble sport. A river like the Thames, belonging as it
does--or as it ought--to a city like London, should be managed from the
very broadest standpoint. There should be pleasure for all, and there
certainly is no real difficulty in arranging matters to that end. The
Thames should be like a great aquarium, in which a certain balance of
life has to be kept up. When aquaria first came into favour such things
as snails and weeds were excluded as eyesores and injurious. But it was
soon discovered that the despised snails and weeds were absolutely
necessary; an aquarium could not be maintained in health without them,
and now the most perfect aquarium is the one in which the natural state
is most completely copied. On the same principle it is evident that too
exclusive preservation must be injurious to the true interests of the
river. Fish enthusiasts, for instance, desire the extinction of
water-fowl--there is not a single aquatic bird which they do not accuse
of damage to fry, spawn, or full-grown fish; no, not one, from the heron
down to the tiny grebe. They are nearly as bitter against animals, the
poor water-vole (or water-rat) even is denounced and shot. Any one who
chooses may watch the water-rat feeding on aquatic vegetation; never
mind, shoot him because he's there. There is no other reason. Bitterest,
harshest, most envenomed of all is the outcry and hunt directed against
the otter. It is as if the otter were a wolf--as if he were as injurious
as the mighty boar whom Meleager and his companions chased in the days of
dim antiquity. What, then, has the otter done? Has he ravaged the fields?
does he threaten the homesteads? is he at Temple Bar? are we to run, as
the old song says, from the Dragon? The fact is, the ravages attributed
to the otter are of a local character. They are chiefly committed in
those places where fish are more or less confined. If you keep sheep
close together in a pen the wolf who leaps the hurdles can kill the flock
if he chooses. In narrow waters, and where fish are maintained in
quantities out of proportion to extent, an otter can work doleful woe.
That is to say, those who want too many fish are those who give the otter
his opportunity.

In a great river like the Thames a few otters cannot do much or lasting
injury except in particular places. The truth is, that the otter is an
ornament to the river, and more worthy of preservation than any other
creature. He is the last and largest of the wild creatures who once
roamed so freely in the forests which enclosed Londinium, that fort in
the woods and marshes--marshes which to this day, though drained and
built over, enwrap the nineteenth-century city in thick mists. The red
deer are gone, the boar is gone, the wolf necessarily destroyed--the red
deer can never again drink at the Thames in the dusk of the evening while
our civilisation endures. The otter alone remains--the wildest, the most
thoroughly self-supporting of all living things left--a living link going
back to the days of Cassivelaunus. London ought to take the greatest
interest in the otters of its river. The shameless way in which every
otter that dares to show itself is shot, trapped, beaten to death, and
literally battered out of existence, should rouse the indignation of
every sportsman and every lover of nature. The late Rev. John Russell,
who, it will be admitted, was a true sportsman, walked three thousand
miles to see an otter. That was a different spirit, was it not?

That is the spirit in which the otter in the Thames should be regarded.
Those who offer money rewards for killing Thames otters ought to be
looked on as those who would offer rewards for poisoning foxes in
Leicestershire, I suppose we shall not see the ospreys again; but I
should like to. Again, on the other side of the boundary, in the tidal
waters, the same sort of ravenous destruction is carried on against
everything that ventures up. A short time ago a porpoise came up to
Mortlake; now, just think, a porpoise up from the great sea--that sea to
which Londoners rush with such joy--past Gravesend, past Greenwich, past
the Tower, under London Bridge, past Westminster and the Houses of
Parliament, right up to Mortlake. It is really a wonderful thing that a
denizen of the sea, so large and interesting as a porpoise, should come
right through the vast City of London. In an aquarium, people would go to
see it and admire it, and take their children to see it. What happened?
Some one hastened out in a boat, armed with a gun or a rifle, and
occupied himself with shooting at it. He did not succeed in killing it,
but it was wounded. Some difference here to the spirit of John Russell.
If I may be permitted to express an opinion, I think that there is not a
single creature, from the sand-marten and the black-headed bunting to the
broad-winged heron, from the water-vole to the otter, from the minnow on
one side of the tidal boundary to the porpoise on the other--big and
little, beasts and birds (of prey or not)--that should not be encouraged
and protected on this beautiful river, morally the property of the
greatest city in the world.


II

I looked forward to living by the river with delight, anticipating the
long rows I should have past the green eyots and the old houses red-tiled
among the trees. I should pause below the weir and listen to the pleasant
roar, and watch the fisherman cast again and again with the "transcendent
patience" of genius by which alone the Thames trout is captured. Twisting
the end of a willow bough round my wrist I could moor myself and rest at
ease, though the current roared under the skiff, fresh from the
waterfall. A thousand thousand bubbles rising to the surface would whiten
the stream--a thousand thousand succeeded by another thousand
thousand--and still flowing, no multiple could express the endless
number. That which flows continually by some sympathy is acceptable to
the mind, as if thereby it realised its own existence without an end.
Swallows would skim the water to and fro as yachts tack, the sandpiper
would run along the strand, a black-headed bunting would perch upon the
willow; perhaps, as the man of genius fishing and myself made no noise, a
kingfisher might come, and we might see him take his prey.

Or I might quit hold of the osier, and, entering a shallow backwater,
disturb shoals of roach playing where the water was transparent to the
bottom, after their wont. Winding in and out like an Indian in his canoe,
perhaps traces of an otter might be found--his kitchen modding--and in
the sedges moorhens and wildfowl would hide from me. From its banks I
should gather many a flower and notice many a plant, there would be, too,
the beautiful water-lily. Or I should row on up the great stream by
meadows full of golden buttercups, past fields crimson with trifolium or
green with young wheat. Handsome sailing craft would come down spanking
before the breeze, laden with bright girls--laughter on board, and love
the golden fleece of their argosy.

I should converse with the ancient men of the ferries, and listen to
their river lore; they would show me the mark to which the stream rose in
the famous year of floods. On again to the cool hostelry whose sign was
reflected in the water, where there would be a draught of fine ale for
the heated and thirsty sculler. On again till steeple or tower rising
over the trees marked my journey's end for the day, some old town where,
after rest and refreshment, there would be a ruin or a timbered house to
look at, where I should meet folk full of former days and quaint tales of
yore. Thus to journey on from place to place would be the great charm of
the river--travelling by water, not merely sculling to and fro, but
really travelling. Upon a lake I could but row across and back again, and
however lovely the scenery might be, still it would always be the same.
But the Thames, upon the river I could really travel, day after day, from
Teddington Lock upwards to Windsor, to Oxford, on to quiet Lechlade, or
even farther deep into the meadows by Cricklade. Every hour there would
be something interesting, all the freshwater life to study, the very
barges would amuse me, and at last there would be the delicious ease of
floating home carried by the stream, repassing all that had pleased
before.

The time came. I lived by the river, not far from its widest reaches,
before the stream meets its tide. I went to the eyot for a boat, and my
difficulties began. The crowd of boats lashed to each other in strings
ready for the hirer disconcerted me. There were so many I could not
choose; the whole together looked like a broad raft. Others were hauled
on the shore. Over on the eyot, a little island, there were more boats,
boats launched, boats being launched, boats being carried by gentlemen in
coloured flannels as carefully as mothers handle their youngest infants,
boats covered in canvas mummy-cases, and dim boats under roofs, their
sharp prows projecting like crocodiles' snouts. Tricksy outriggers, ready
to upset on narrow keel, were held firmly for the sculler to step
daintily into his place. A strong eight shot by up the stream, the men
all pulling together as if they had been one animal. A strong sculler
shot by down the stream, his giant arms bare and the muscles visible as
they rose, knotting and unknotting with the stroke. Every one on the bank
and eyot stopped to watch him--they knew him, he was training. How could
an amateur venture out and make an exhibition of himself after such
splendid rowing! Still it was noticeable that plenty of amateurs did
venture out, till the waterway was almost concealed--boated over instead
of bridged--and how they managed to escape locking their oars together, I
could not understand.

I looked again at the boats. Some were outriggers. I could not get into
an outrigger after seeing the great sculler. The rest were one and all
after the same pattern, _i.e._ with the stern cushioned and prepared for
a lady. Some were larger, and could carry three or four ladies, but they
were all intended for the same purpose. If the sculler went out in such a
boat by himself he must either sit too forward and so depress the stem
and dig himself, as it were, into the water at each stroke, or he must
sit too much to the rear and depress the stern, and row with the stem
lifted up, sniffing the air. The whole crowd of boats on hire were
exactly the same; in short, they were built for woman and not for man,
for lovely woman to recline, parasol in one hand and tiller ropes in the
other, while man--inferior man--pulled and pulled and pulled as an ox
yoked to the plough. They could only be balanced by man and woman, that
was the only way they could be trimmed on an even keel; they were like
scales, in which the weight on one side must be counterpoised by a weight
in the other. They were dead against bachelors. They belonged to woman,
and she was absolute mistress of the river.

As I looked, the boats ground together a little, chafing, laughing at me,
making game of me, asking distinctly what business a man had there
without at least one companion in petticoats? My courage ebbed, and it
was in a feeble voice that I inquired whether there was no such thing as
a little skiff a fellow might paddle about in? No, nothing of the kind;
would a canoe do? Somehow a canoe would not do. I never took kindly to
canoes, excepting always the Canadian birch-bark pattern; evidently there
was no boat for me. There was no place on the great river for an
indolent, dreamy particle like myself, apt to drift up into nooks, and to
spend much time absorbing those pleasures which enter by the exquisite
sensitiveness of the eye--colour, and shade, and form, and the cadence of
glittering ripple and moving leaf. You must be prepared to pull and push,
and struggle for your existence on the river, as in the vast city hard by
men push and crush for money. You must assert yourself, and insist upon
having your share of the waterway; you must be perfectly convinced that
yours is the very best style of rowing to be seen; every one ought to get
out of your way. You must consult your own convenience only, and drive
right into other people's boats, forcing them up into the willows, or
against the islands. Never slip along the shore, or into quiet
backwaters; always select the more frequented parts, not because you want
to go there, but to make your presence known, and go amongst the crowd;
and if a few sculls get broken, it only proves how very inferior and how
very clumsy other people are. If you see another boat coming down stream,
in the centre of the river with a broad space on either side for others
to pass, at once head your own boat straight at her, and take possession
of the way. Or, better still, never look ahead, but pull straight on, and
let things happen as they may. Annoy everybody, and you are sure to be
right, and to be respected; splash the ladies as you pass with a
dexterous flip of the scull, and soak their summer costumes; it is
capital sport, and they look so sulky--or is it contemptuous?

There was no such thing as a skiff in which one could quietly paddle
about, or gently make way--mile after mile--up the beautiful stream. The
boating throng grew thicker, and my courage less and less, till I
desperately resorted to the ferry--at all events, I could be rowed over
in the ferry-boat, that would be something; I should be on the water,
after a fashion--and the ferryman would know a good deal. The burly
ferryman cared nothing at all about the river, and merely answered "Yes,"
or "No;" he was full of the Derby and Sandown; didn't know about the
fishing; supposed there were fish; didn't see 'em, nor eat 'em; want a
punt? No. So he landed me, desolate and hopeless, on the opposite bank,
and I began to understand how the souls felt after Charon had got them
over. They could not have been more unhappy than I was on the
towing-path, as the ferryboat receded and left me watching the continuous
succession of boats passing up and down the river.

By-and-by an immense black hulk came drifting round the bend--an empty
barge--almost broadside across the stream, for the current at the curve
naturally carried it out from the shore. This huge helpless monster
occupied the whole river, and had no idea where it was going, for it had
no fins or sweeps to guide its course, and the rudder could only induce
it to submit itself lengthways to the stream after the lapse of some
time. The fairway of the river was entirely taken up by this
irresponsible Frankenstein of the Thames, which some one had started, but
which now did as it liked. Some of the small craft got up into the
willows and waited; some seemed to narrowly escape being crushed against
a wall on the opposite bank. The bright white sails of a yacht shook and
quivered as its steersman tried all he knew to coax his vessel an inch
more into the wind out of the monster's path. In vain! He had to drop
down the stream, and lose what it had taken him half an hour's skill to
gain. What a pleasing monster to meet in the narrow arches of a bridge!
The man in charge leaned on the tiller, and placidly gazed at the wild
efforts of some unskilful oarsmen to escape collision. In fact, the
monster had charge of the man, and did as it liked with him.

Down the river they drifted together, Frankenstein swinging round and
thrusting his blunt nose first this way and then that; down the river,
blocking up the narrow passage by the eyot; stopping the traffic at the
lock; out at last into the tidal stream, there to begin a fresh life of
annoyance, and finally to endanger the good speed of many a fine
three-master and ocean steamer off the docks. The Thames barge knows no
law. No judge, no jury, no Palace of Justice, no Chancery, no appeal to
the Lords has any terror for the monster barge. It drifts by the Houses
of Parliament with no more respect than it shows for the lodge of the
lock-keeper. It drifts by Royal Windsor and cares not. The guns of the
Tower are of no account. There is nothing in the world so utterly free as
this monster.

Often have I asked myself if the bargee at the tiller, now sucking at his
short black pipe, now munching onions and cheese (the little onions he
pitches on the lawns by the river side, there to take root and
flourish)--if this amiable man has any notion of his own incomparable
position. Just some inkling of the irony of the situation must, I fancy,
now and then dimly dawn within his grimy brow. To see all these gentlemen
shoved on one side; to be lying in the way of a splendid Australian
clipper; to stop an incoming vessel, impatient for her berth; to swing,
and sway, and roll as he goes; to bump the big ships, and force the
little ones aside; to slip, and slide, and glide with the tide, ripples
dancing under the prow, and be master of the world-famed Thames from
source to mouth, is not this a joy for ever? Liberty is beyond price; now
no one is really free unless he can crush his neighbour's interest
underfoot, like a horse-roller going over a daisy. Bargee is free, and
the ashes of his pipe are worth a king's ransom.

Imagine a great van loaded at the East-end of London with the heaviest
merchandise, with bags of iron nails, shot, leaden sheets in rolls, and
pig iron; imagine four strong horses--dray-horses--harnessed thereto.
Then let the waggoner mount behind in a seat comfortably contrived for
him facing the rear, and settle himself down happily among his sacks,
light his pipe, and fold his hands untroubled with any worry of reins.
Away they go through the crowded city, by the Bank of England, and across
into Cheapside, cabs darting this way, carriages that, omnibuses forced
up into side-streets, foot traffic suspended till the monster has passed;
up Fleet-street, clearing the road in front of them--right through the
stream of lawyers always rushing to and fro the Temple and the New Law
Courts, along the Strand, and finally in triumph into Rotten Row at five
o'clock on a June afternoon. See how they scatter! see how they run! The
Row is swept clear from end to end--beauty, fashion, rank,--what are such
trifles of an hour? The monster vans grind them all to powder. What such
a waggoner might do on land, bargee does on the river.

Of olden time the silver Thames was the chosen mode of travel of
Royalty--the highest in the land were rowed from palace to city, or city
to palace, between its sunlit banks. Noblemen had their special oarsmen,
and were in like manner conveyed, and could any other mode of journeying
be equally pleasant? The coal-barge has bumped them all out of the way.

No man dares send forth the commonest cart unless in proper charge, and
if the horse is not under control a fine is promptly administered. The
coal-barge rolls and turns and drifts as chance and the varying current
please. How huge must be the rent in the meshes of the law to let so
large a fish go through! But in truth there is no law about it, and to
this day no man can confidently affirm that he knows to whom the river
belongs. These curious anomalies are part and parcel of our political
system, and as I watched the black monster slowly go by with the stream
it occurred to me that grimy bargee, with his short pipe and his onions,
was really the guardian of the British Constitution.

Hardly had he gone past than a loud Pant! pant! pant! began some way down
the river; it came from a tug, whose short puffs of steam produced a
giant echo against the walls and quays and houses on the bank. These
angry pants sounded high above the splash of oars and laughter, and the
chorus of singers in a boat; they conquered all other sounds and noises,
and domineered the place. It was impossible to shut the ears to them, or
to persuade the mind not to heed. The swallows dipped their breasts; how
gracefully they drank on the wing! Pant! pant! pant! The sunlight gleamed
on the wake of a four-oar. Pant! pant! pant! The soft wind blew among the
trees and over the hawthorn hedge. Pant! pant! pant! Neither the eye nor
ear could attend to aught but this hideous uproar. The tug was weak, the
stream strong, the barges behind heavy, broad, and deeply laden, so that
each puff and pant and turn of the screw barely advanced the mass a foot.
There are many feet in a mile, and for all that weary time--Pant! pant!
pant! This dreadful uproar, like that which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
heard proceeding from the fulling mill, must be endured. Could not
philosophy by stoic firmness shut out the sound? Can philosophy shut out
anything that is real? A long black streak of smoke hung over the water,
fouling the gleaming surface. A noise of Dante--hideous, uncompromising
as the rusty hinge of the gate which forbids hope. Pant! pant! pant!

Once upon a time a Queen of England was rowed down the silver Thames to
the sweet low sound of the flute.

At last the noise grew fainter in the distance, and the black hulls
disappeared round the bend. I walked on up the towing-path. Accidentally
lifting my hand to shade my eyes, I was hailed by a ferryman on the
watch. He conveyed me over without much volition on my part, and set me
ashore by the inn of my imagination. The rooms almost overhung the water:
so far my vision was fulfilled. Within there was an odour of spirits and
spilled ale, a rustle of sporting papers, talk of racings, and the click
of billiard-balls. Without there were two or three loafers, half boatmen,
half vagabonds, waiting to pick up stray sixpences--a sort of leprosy of
rascal and sneak in their faces and the lounge of their bodies. These
Thames-side "beach-combers" are a sorry lot, a special Pariah class of
themselves. Some of them have been men once: perhaps one retains his
sculling skill, and is occasionally engaged by a gentleman to give him
lessons. They regarded me eagerly--they "spotted" a Thames freshman who
might be made to yield silver; but I walked away down the road into the
village. The spire of the church interested me, being of shingles--_i.e._
of wooden slates--as the houses are roofed in America, as houses were
roofed in Elizabethan England; for Young America reproduces Old England
even in roofs. Some of the houses so closely approached the churchyard
that the pantry windows on a level with the ground were partly blocked up
by the green mounds of graves. Borage grew thickly all over the yard,
dropping its blue flowers on the dead. The sharp note of a bugle rang in
the air: they were changing guard, I suppose, in Wolsey's Palace.


III

In time I did discover a skiff moored in a little-visited creek, which
the boatman got out for me. The sculls were rough and shapeless--it is a
remarkable fact that sculls always are, unless you have them made and
keep them for your own use. I paddled up the river; I paused by an
osier-grown islet; I slipped past the barges, and avoided an unskilful
party; it was the morning, and none of the uproarious as yet were about.
Certainly, it was very pleasant. The sunshine gleamed on the water, broad
shadows of trees fell across; swans floated in the by-channels. A
peacefulness which peculiarly belongs to water hovered above the river. A
house-boat was moored near the willow-grown shore, and it was evidently
inhabited, for there was a fire smouldering on the bank, and some linen
that had been washed spread on the bushes to bleach. All the windows of
this gipsy-van of the river were wide open, and the air and light entered
freely into every part of the dwelling-house under which flowed the
stream. A lady was dressing herself before one of these open windows,
twining up large braids of dark hair, her large arms bare to the
shoulder, and somewhat farther. I immediately steered out into the
channel to avoid intrusion; but I felt that she was regarding me with all
a matron's contempt for an unknown man--a mere member of the opposite
sex, not introduced, or of her "set." I was merely a man--no more than a
horse on the bank,--and had she been in her smock she would have been
just as indifferent.

Certainly it was a lovely morning; the old red palace of the Cardinal
seemed to slumber amid its trees, as if the passage of the centuries had
stroked and soothed it into indolent peace. The meadows rested; even the
swallows, the restless swallows, glided in an effortless way through the
busy air. I could see this, and yet I did not quite enjoy it; something
drew me away from perfect contentment, and gradually it dawned upon me
that it was the current causing an unsuspected amount of labour in
sculling. The forceless particles of water, so yielding to the touch,
which slipped aside at the motion of the oar, in their countless myriads
ceaselessly flowing grew to be almost a solid obstruction to the boat. I
had not noticed it for a mile or so; now the pressure of the stream was
becoming evident. I persuaded myself that it was nothing. I held on by
the boathook to a root and rested, and so went on again. Another mile or
more; another rest: decidedly sculling against a swift current is
work--downright work. You have no energy to spare over and above that
needed for the labour of rowing, not enough even to look round and admire
the green loveliness of the shore. I began to think that I should not get
as far as Oxford after all.

By-and-by, I began to question if rowing on a river is as pleasant as
rowing on a lake, where you can rest on your oars without losing ground,
where no current opposes progress, and after the stroke the boat slips
ahead some distance of its own impetus. On the river the boat only
travels as far as you actually pull it at each stroke; there is no life
in it after the scull is lifted, the impetus dies, and the craft first
pauses and then drifts backward. I crept along the shore, so near that
one scull occasionally grounded, to avoid the main force of the water,
which is in the middle of the river. I slipped behind eyots and tried all
I knew. In vain, the river was stronger than I, and my arms could not for
many hours contend with the Thames. So faded another part of my dream.
The idea of rowing from one town to another--of expeditions and
travelling across the country, so pleasant to think of--in practice
became impossible. An athlete bent on nothing but athleticism--a canoeist
thinking of nothing but his canoe--could accomplish it, setting himself
daily so much work to do, and resolutely performing it. A dreamer, who
wanted to enjoy his passing moment, and not to keep regular time with his
strokes, who wanted to gather flowers, and indulge his luxurious eyes
with effects of light and shadow and colour, could not succeed. The river
is for the man of might.

With a weary back at last I gave up the struggle at the foot of a weir,
almost in the splash of the cascade. My best friend, the boathook, kept
me stationary without effort, and in time rest restored the strained
muscles to physical equanimity. The roar of the river falling over the
dam soothed the mind--the sense of an immense power at hand, working with
all its might while you are at ease, has a strangely soothing influence.
It makes me sleepy to see the vast beam of an engine regularly rise and
fall in ponderous irresistible labour. Now at last some fragment of my
fancy was realised--a myriad myriad rushing bubbles whitening the stream
burst, and were instantly succeeded by myriads more; the boat faintly
vibrated as the wild waters shot beneath it; the green cascade, smooth at
its first curve, dashed itself into the depth beneath, broken to a
million million particles; the eddies whirled, and sucked, and sent tiny
whirlpools rotating along the surface; the roar rose or lessened in
intensity as the velocity of the wind varied; sunlight sparkled--the
warmth inclined the senses to a drowsy idleness. Yonder was the trout
fisherman, just as I had imagined him, casting and casting again with
that transcendental patience which is genius; his line and the top of his
rod formed momentary curves pleasant to look at. The kingfisher did not
come--no doubt he had been shot--but a reed-sparrow did, in velvet black
cap and dainty brown, pottering about the willow near me. This was really
like the beautiful river I had dreamed of. If only we could persuade
ourselves to remain quiescent when we are happy! If only we would remain
still in the armchair as the last curl of vapour rises from a cigar that
has been enjoyed! If only we would sit still in the shadow and not go
indoors to write that letter! Let happiness alone. Stir not an inch;
speak not a word: happiness is a coy maiden--hold her hand and be still.

In an evil moment I spied the corner of a newspaper projecting from the
pocket of my coat in the stern-sheets. Folly led me to open that
newspaper, and in it I saw and read a ghastly paragraph. Two ladies and a
gentleman while boating had been carried by the current against the piles
of a weir. The boat upset; the ladies were rescued, but the unfortunate
gentleman was borne over the fall and drowned. His body had not been
recovered; men were watching the pool day and night till some chance eddy
should bring it to the surface. So perished my dream, and the coy-maiden
happiness left me because I could not be content to be silent and still.
The accident had not happened at this weir, but it made no difference; I
could see all as plainly. A white face, blurred and indistinct, seemed to
rise up from beneath the rushing bubbles till, just as it was about to
jump to the surface, as things do that come up, down it was drawn again
by that terrible underpull which has been fatal to so many good swimmers.

Who can keep afloat with a force underneath dragging at the feet? Who can
swim when the water--all bubbles, that is air--gives no resistance to the
hands? Hands and feet slip through the bubbles. You might as well spring
from the parapet of a house and think to float by striking out as to swim
in such a medium. Sinking under, a hundred tons of water drive the body
to the bottom; there it rotates, it rises, it is forced down again, a
hundred tons of water beat upon it; the foot, perhaps, catches among
stones or woodwork, and what was once a living being is imprisoned in
death. Enough of this. I unloosed the boathook, and drifted down with the
stream, anxious to get away from the horrible weir.

These accidents, which are entirely preventable, happen year after year
with lamentable monotony. Each weir is a little Niagara, and a boat once
within its influence is certain to be driven to destruction. The current
carries it against the piles, where it is either broken or upset, the
natural and reasonable alarm of the occupants increasing the risk. In
descending the river every boat must approach the weir, and must pass
within a few yards of the dangerous current. If there is a press of boats
one is often forced out of the proper course into the rapid part of the
stream without any negligence on the part of those in it. There is
nothing to prevent this--no fence, or boom; no mark, even, between what
is dangerous and what is not; no division whatever. Persons ignorant of
the river may just as likely as not row right into danger. A vague
caution on a notice-board may or may not be seen; in either case it gives
no directions, and is certainly no protection. Let the matter be argued
from whatever point of view, the fact remains that these accidents occur
from the want of an efficient division between the dangerous and the safe
part of the approach to a weir. A boom or some kind of fence is required,
and how extraordinary it seems that nothing of the kind is done! It is
not done because there is no authority, no control, no one responsible.
Two or three gentlemen acquainted with aquatics could manage the river
from end to end, to the safety and satisfaction of all, if they were
entrusted with discretionary powers. Stiff rules and rigid control are
not needed; what is wanted is a rational power freely using its
discretion. I do not mean a Board with its attendant follies; I mean a
small committee, unfettered, untrammelled by "legal advisers" and so
forth, merely using their own good sense.

I drifted away from the weir--now grown hideous--and out of hearing of
its wailing dirge for the unfortunate. I drifted past more barges coming
up, and more steam-tugs; past river lawns, where gay parties were now
sipping claret-cup or playing tennis. By-and-by, I began to meet
pleasure-boats and to admire their manner of progress. First there came a
gentleman in white flannels, walking on the tow-path, with a rope round
his waist, towing a boat in which two ladies were comfortably seated. In
a while came two more gentlemen in striped flannels, one streaked with
gold the other with scarlet, striding side by side and towing a boat in
which sat one lady. They were very earnestly at work, pacing in step,
their bodies slightly leaning forwards, and every now and then they
mopped their faces with handkerchiefs which they carried in their
girdles. Something in their slightly-bowed attitude reminded me of the
captives depicted on Egyptian monuments, with cords about their necks.
How curious is that instinct which makes each sex, in different ways, the
willing slave of the other! These human steam-tugs paced and pulled, and
drew the varnished craft swiftly against the stream, evidently determined
to do a certain distance by a certain hour. As I drifted by without
labour, I admired them very much. An interval, and still more gentlemen
in flannel, labouring like galley-slaves at the tow-rope, hot,
perspiring, and happy after their kind, and ladies under parasols,
comfortably seated, cool, and happy after their kind.

Considering upon these things, I began to discern the true and only
manner in which the modern Thames is to be enjoyed. Above all
things--nothing heroic. Don't scull--don't row--don't haul at
tow-ropes--don't swim--don't flourish a fishing-rod. Set your mind at
ease. Make friends with two or more athletes, thorough good fellows,
good-natured, delighting in their thews and sinews. Explain to them that
somehow, don't you see, nature did not bless you with such superabundant
muscularity, although there is nothing under the sun you admire so much.
Forthwith these good fellows will pet you, and your Thames fortune is
made. You take your place in the stern-sheets, happily protected on
either side by feminine human nature, and the parasols meeting above
shield you from the sun. The tow-rope is adjusted, and the tugs start.
The gliding motion soothes the soul. Feminine boating nature has no
antipathy to the cigarette. A delicious odour, soft as new-mown hay, a
hint of spices and distant flowers--sunshine dried and preserved,
sunshine you can handle--rises from the smouldering fibres. This is
smoking summer itself. Yonder in the fore part of the craft I espy
certain vessels of glass on which is the label of Epernay. And of such is
peace.

Drifting ever downwards, I approached the creek where my skiff had to be
left; but before I reached it a "beach-comber," with a coil of cord over
his shoulder, asked me if he should tow me "up to 'Ampton." I shook my
head, whereupon he abused me in such choice terms that I listened abashed
at my ignorance. It had never occurred to me that swearing could be done
like that. It is true we have been swearing now, generation after
generation, these eight thousand years for certain, and language expands
with use. It is also true that we are all educated now. Shakespeare is
credited with knowing everything, past or future, but I doubt if he knew
how a Thames "beach-comber" can curse in these days.

The Thames is swearing free. You must moderate your curses on the Queen's
highway; you must not be even profane in the streets, lest you be taken
before the magistrates; but on the Thames you may swear as the wind
blows--howsoever you list. You may begin at the mouth, off the Nore, and
curse your way up to Cricklade. A hundred miles for swearing is a fine
preserve. It is one of the marvels of our civilisation.

Aided by scarce a touch of the sculls the stream drifted me up into the
creek, and the boatman took charge of his skiff. "Shall I keep her handy
for you, sir?" he said, thinking to get me down every day as a newcomer.
I begged him not to put himself to any trouble, still he repeated that he
would keep her ready. But in the road I shook off the dust of my feet
against the river, and earnestly resolved never, never again to have
anything to do with it (in the heroic way) lower down than Henley.



THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN


The single-barrel gun has passed out of modern sport; but I remember mine
with regret, and think I shall some day buy another. I still find that
the best double-barrel seems top-heavy in comparison; in poising it the
barrels have a tendency to droop. Guns, of course, are built to balance
and lie level in the hand, so as to almost aim themselves as they come to
the shoulder; and those who have always shot with a double-barrel are
probably quite satisfied with the gun on that score. To me there seems
too much weight in the left hand and towards the end of the gun.
Quickness of firing keeps the double-barrel to the front; but suppose a
repeater were to be invented, some day, capable of discharging two
cartridges in immediate succession? And if two cartridges, why not three?
An easy thought, but a very difficult one to realise. Something in the
_power_ of the double-barrel--the overwhelming odds it affords the
sportsman over bird and animal--pleases. A man feels master of the copse
with a double-barrel; and such a sense of power, though only over feeble
creatures, is fascinating. Besides, there is the delight of effect; for a
clever right and left is sure of applause and makes the gunner feel
"good" in himself. Doubtless, if three barrels could be managed, three
barrels would be more saleable than doubles. One gun-maker has a
four-barrel gun, quite a light weight too, which would be a tremendous
success if the creatures would obligingly run and fly a little slower, so
that all four cartridges could be got in. But that they will not do. For
the present, the double-barrel is the gun of the time.

Still I mean some day to buy a single-barrel, and wander with it as of
old along the hedges, aware that if I am not skilful enough to bring down
with the first shot I shall lose my game. It is surprising how confident
of that one shot you may get after a while. On the one hand, it is
necessary to be extremely keen; on the other, to be sure of your own
self-control, not to fire uselessly. The bramble-bushes on the shore of
the ditch ahead might cover a hare. Through the dank and dark-green
aftermath a rabbit might suddenly come bounding, disturbed from the
furrow where he had been feeding. On the sandy paths which the rabbits
have made aslant up the mound, and on their terraces, where they sit and
look out from under the boughs, acorns have dropped ripe from the tree.
Where there are acorns there may be pheasants; they may crouch in the
fern and dry grey grass of the hedge thinking you do not see them, or
else rush through and take wing on the opposite side. The only chance of
a shot is as the bird passes a gap--visible while flying a yard--just
time to pull the trigger. But I would rather have that chance than have
to fire between the bars of a gate; for the horizontal lines cause an
optical illusion, making the object appear in a different position from
what it really is in, and half the pellets are sure to be buried in the
rails. Wood-pigeons, when eagerly stuffing their crops with acorns,
sometimes forget their usual caution; and, walking slowly, I have often
got right underneath one--as unconscious of his presence as he was of
mine, till a sudden dashing of wings against boughs and leaves announced
his departure. This he always makes on the opposite side of the oak, so
as to have the screen of the thick branches between himself and the
gunner. The wood-pigeon, starting like this from a tree, usually descends
in the first part of his flight, a gentle downward curve followed by an
upward rise, and thus comes into view at the lower part of the curve. He
still seems within shot, and to afford a good mark; and yet experience
has taught me that it is generally in vain to fire. His stout quills
protect him at the full range of the gun. Besides, a wasted shot alarms
everything within several hundred yards; and in stalking with a
single-barrel it needs as much knowledge to choose when not to fire as
when you may.

The most exciting work with the single-barrel was woodcock shooting;
woodcock being by virtue of rarity a sort of royal game, and a miss at a
woodcock a terrible disappointment. They have a trick of skimming along
the very summit of a hedge, and looking so easy to kill; but, as they
fly, the tops of tall briers here, willow-rods next, or an ash-pole often
intervene, and the result is apt to be a bough cut off and nothing more.
Snipes, on the contrary, I felt sure of with the single-barrel, and never
could hit them so well with a double. Either at starting, before the
snipe got into his twist, or waiting till he had finished that uncertain
movement, the single-barrel seemed to drop the shot with certainty. This
was probably because of its perfect natural balance, so that it moved as
if on a pivot. With the single I had nothing to manage but my own arms;
with the other I was conscious that I had a gun also. With the single I
could kill farther, no matter what it was. The single was quicker at
short shots--snap-shots, as at rabbits darting across a narrow lane; and
surer at long shots, as at a hare put out a good way ahead by the dog.

For everything but the multiplication of slaughter I liked the single
best; I had more of the sense of woodcraft with it. When we consider how
helpless a partridge is, for instance, before the fierce blow of shot, it
does seem fairer that the gunner should have but one chance at the bird.
Partridges at least might be kept for single-barrels: great bags of
partridges never seemed to be quite right. Somehow it seems to me that to
take so much advantage as the double-barrel confers is not altogether in
the spirit of sport. The double-barrel gives no "law." At least to those
who love the fields, the streams, and woods for their own sake, the
single-barrel will fill the bag sufficiently, and will permit them to
enjoy something of the zest men knew before the invention of weapons not
only of precision but of repetition: inventions that rendered them too
absolute masters of the situation. A single-barrel will soon make a
sportsman the keenest of shots. The gun itself can be built to an
exquisite perfection--lightness, handiness, workmanship, and performance
of the very best. It is said that you can change from a single-barrel
shot-gun to a sporting rifle and shoot with the rifle almost at once;
while many who have been used to the slap-dash double cannot do anything
for some time with a rifle. More than one African explorer has found his
single-barrel smooth-bore the most useful of all the pieces in his
battery; though, of course, of much larger calibre than required in our
fields.



THE HAUNT OF THE HARE


It is never so much winter in the country as it is in the town. The trees
are still there, and in and about them birds remain. "Quip! whip!" sounds
from the elms; "Whip! quip!" Redwing thrushes threaten with the "whip"
those who advance towards them; they spend much of the day in the
elm-tops. Thick tussocks of old grass are conspicuous at the skirt of a
hedge; half green, half grey, they contrast with the bare thorn. From
behind one of these tussocks a hare starts, his black-tipped ears erect,
his long hinder limbs throwing him almost like a grasshopper over the
sward--no creature looks so handsome or startling, and it is always a
pleasant surprise to see him. Pheasant or partridge do not surprise in
the least--they are no more than any other bird; but a hare causes quite
a different feeling. He is perfectly wild, unfed, untended, and then he
is the largest animal to be shot in the fields. A rabbit slips along the
mound, under bushes and behind stoles, but a hare bolts for the open, and
hopes in his speed. He leaves the straining spaniel behind, and the
distance between them increases as they go. The spaniel's broad hind paws
are thrown wide apart as he runs, striking outwards as well as backwards,
and his large ears are lifted by the wind of his progress. Overtaken by
the cartridge, still the hare, as he lies in the dewy grass, is handsome;
lift him up and his fur is full of colour, there are layers of tint,
shadings of brown within it, one under the other, and the surface is
exquisitely clean. The colours are not really bright, at least not
separately; but they are so clean and so clear that they give an
impression of warmth and brightness. Even in the excitement of sport
regret cannot but be felt at the sight of those few drops of blood about
the mouth which indicate that all this beautiful workmanship must now
cease to be. Had he escaped the sportsman would not have been displeased.

The black bud-sheaths of the ash may furnish a comparison for his
ear-tips; the brown brake in October might give one hue for his fur; the
yellow or buff bryony leaf perhaps another; the clematis is not whiter
than the white part. His colours, as those of so many of our native wild
creatures, appear selected from the woods, as if they had been gathered
and skilfully mingled together. They can be traced or paralleled in the
trees, the bushes, grasses, or flowers, as if extracted from them by a
secret alchemy. In the plumage of the partridge there are tints that may
be compared with the brown corn, the brown ripe grains rubbed from the
ear; it is in the corn-fields that the partridge delights. There the
young brood are sheltered, there they feed and grow plump. The red tips
of other feathers are reflections of the red sorrel of the meadows. The
grey fur of the rabbit resembles the grey ash hue of the underwood in
which he hides.

A common plant in moist places, the figwort, bears small velvety flowers,
much the colour of the red velvet topknot of the goldfinch, the yellow on
whose wings is like the yellow bloom of the furze which he frequents in
the winter, perching cleverly on its prickly extremities. In the woods,
in the bark of the trees, the varied shades of the branches as their size
diminishes, the adhering lichens, the stems of the underwood, now grey,
now green; the dry stalks of plants, brown, white, or dark, all the
innumerable minor hues that cross and interlace, there is suggested the
woven texture of tints found on the wings of birds. For brighter tones
the autumn leaves can be resorted to, and in summer the finches rising
from the grass spring upwards from among flowers that could supply them
with all their colours. But it is not so much the brighter as the
undertones that seem to have been drawn from the woodlands or fields.
Although no such influence has really been exerted by the trees and
plants upon the living creatures, yet it is pleasant to trace the
analogy. Those who would convert it into a scientific fact are met with a
dilemma to which they are usually oblivious, _i.e._ that most birds
migrate, and the very tints which in this country might perhaps, by a
stretch of argument, be supposed to conceal them, in a distant climate
with a different foliage, or none, would render them conspicuous. Yet it
is these analogies and imaginative comparisons which make the country so
delightful.

One day in autumn, after toiling with their guns, which are heavy in the
September heats, across the fields and over the hills, the hospitable
owner of the place suddenly asked his weary and thirsty friend which he
would have, champagne, ale, or spirits. They were just then in the midst
of a cover, the trees kept off the wind, the afternoon sun was warm, and
thirst very natural. They had not been shooting in the cover, but had to
pass through to other cornfields. It seemed a sorry jest to ask which
would be preferred in that lonely and deserted spot, miles from home or
any house whence refreshment could be obtained--wine, spirits, or
ale?--an absurd question, and irritating under the circumstances. As it
was repeated persistently, however, the reply was at length given, in no
very good humour, and wine chosen. Forthwith putting down his gun, the
interrogator pushed in among the underwood, and from a cavity concealed
beneath some bushes drew forth a bottle of champagne. He had several of
these stores hidden in various parts of the domain, ready whichever way
the chance of sport should direct their footsteps.

Now the dry wild parsnip, or "gicks," five feet high, stands dead and
dry, its jointed tube of dark stem surmounted with circular frills or
umbels; the teazle heads are brown, the great burdocks leafless, and
their burs, still adhering, are withered; the ground, almost free of
obstruction, is comparatively easy to search over, but the old sportsman
is too cunning to bury his wine twice in the same place, and it is no use
to look about. No birds in last year's nests--the winds have torn and
upset the mossy structures in the bushes; no champagne in last year's
cover. The driest place is under the firs, where the needles have fallen
and strew the surface thickly. Outside the wood, in the waggon-track, the
beech leaves lie on the side of the mound, dry and shrivelled at the top,
but stir them, and under the top layer they still retain the clear brown
of autumn.

The ivy trailing on the bank is moist and freshly green. There are two
tints of moss; one light, the other deeper--both very pleasant and
restful to the eye. These beds of moss are the greenest and brightest of
the winter's colours. Besides these there are ale-hoof, or ground-ivy
leaves (not the ivy that climbs trees), violet leaves, celandine mars,
primrose mars, foxglove mars, teazle mars, and barren strawberry leaves,
all green in the midst of winter. One tiny white flower of barren
strawberry has ventured to bloom. Round about the lower end of each maple
stick, just at the ground, is a green wrap of moss. Though leafless
above, it is green at the foot. At the verge of the ploughed field below,
exposed as it is, chickweed, groundsel, and shepherd's-purse are
flowering. About a little thorn there hang withered red berries of
bryony, as if the bare thorn bore fruit; the bine of the climbing plant
clings to it still; there are traces of "old man's beard," the white
fluffy relics of clematis bloom, stained brown by the weather; green
catkins droop thickly on the hazel. Every step presents some item of
interest, and thus it is that it is never so much winter in the country.
Where fodder has been thrown down in a pasture field for horses, a black
congregation of rooks has crowded together in a ring. A solitary pole for
trapping hawks stands on the sloping ground outside the cover. These
poles are visited every morning when the trap is there, and the captured
creature put out of pain. Of the cruelty of the trap itself there can be
no doubt; but it is very unjust to assume that therefore those connected
with sport are personally cruel. In a farmhouse much frequented by rats,
and from which they cannot be driven out, these animals are said to have
discovered a means of defying the gin set for them. One such gin was
placed in the cheese-room, near a hole from which they issued, but they
dragged together pieces of straw, little fragments of wood, and various
odds and ends, and so covered the pan that the trap could not spring.
They formed, in fact, a bridge over it.

Red and yellow fungi mark decaying places on the trunks and branches of
the trees; their colour is brightest when the boughs are bare. By a
streamlet wandering into the osier beds the winter gnats dance in the
sunshine, round about an old post covered with ivy, on which green
berries are thick. The warm sunshine gladdens the hearts of the moorhens
floating on the water yonder by the bushes, and their singular note,
"coorg-coorg," is uttered at intervals. In the plantation close to the
house a fox resides as safe as King Louis in "Quentin Durward,"
surrounded with his guards and archers and fortified towers, though
tokens of his midnight rambles, in the shape of bones, strew the front of
his castle. He crosses the lawn in sight of the windows occasionally, as
if he really knew and understood that his life is absolutely safe at
ordinary times, and that he need beware of nothing but the hounds.



THE BATHING SEASON


Most people who go on the West Pier at Brighton walk at once straight to
the farthest part. This is the order and custom of pier promenading; you
are to stalk along the deck till you reach the end, and there go round
and round the band in a circle like a horse tethered to an iron pin, or
else sit down and admire those who do go round and round. No one looks
back at the gradually extending beach and the fine curve of the shore. No
one lingers where the surf breaks--immediately above it--listening to the
remorseful sigh of the dying wave as it sobs back to the sea. There,
looking downwards, the white edge of the surf recedes in hollow
crescents, curve after curve for a mile or more, one succeeding before
the first can disappear and be replaced by a fresh wave. A faint
mistiness hangs above the beach at some distance, formed of the salt
particles dashed into the air and suspended. At night, if the tide
chances to be up, the white surf rushing in and returning immediately
beneath has a strange effect, especially in its pitiless regularity. If
one wave seems to break a little higher it is only in appearance, and
because you have not watched long enough. In a certain number of times
another will break there again; presently one will encroach the merest
trifle; after a while another encroaches again, and the apparent
irregularity is really sternly regular. The free wave has no liberty--it
does not act for itself,--no real generous wildness. "Thus far and no
farther," is not a merciful saying. Cold and dread and pitiless, the wave
claims its due--it stretches its arms to the fullest length, and does not
pause or hearken to the desire of any human heart. Hopeless to appeal to
is the unseen force that sends the white surge underneath to darken the
pebbles to a certain line. The wetted pebbles are darker than the dry;
even in the dusk they are easily distinguished. Something merciless is
there not in this conjunction of restriction and impetus? Something
outside human hope and thought--indifferent--cold?

Considering in this way, I wandered about fifty yards along the pier, and
sat down in an abstracted way on the seat on the right side. Beneath, the
clear green sea rolled in crestless waves towards the shore--they were
moving "without the animation of the wind," which had deserted them two
days ago, and a hundred miles out at sea. Slower and slower, with an
indolent undulation, rising and sinking of mere weight and devoid of
impetus, the waves passed on, scarcely seeming to break the smoothness of
the surface. At a little distance it seemed level; yet the boats every
now and then sank deeply into the trough, and even a large fishing-smack
rolled heavily. For it is the nature of a groundswell to be exceedingly
deceptive. Sometimes the waves are so far apart that the sea actually is
level--smooth as the surface of a polished dining-table--till presently
there appears a darker line slowly approaching, and a wave of
considerable size comes in, advancing exactly like the crease in the
cloth which the housemaid spreads on the table--the air rolling along
underneath it forms a linen imitation of the groundswell. These
unexpected rollers are capital at upsetting boats just touching the
beach; the boat is broadside on and the occupants in the water in a
second. To-day the groundswell was more active, the waves closer
together, not having had time to forget the force of the extinct gale.
Yet the sea looked calm as a millpond--just the morning for a bath.

Along the yellow line where sand and pebbles meet there stood a gallant
band, in gay uniforms, facing the water. Like the imperial legions who
were ordered to charge the ocean, and gather the shells as spoils of war,
the cohorts gleaming in purple and gold extended their front rank--their
fighting line one to a yard--along the strand. Some tall and stately;
some tall and slender; some well developed and firm on their limbs; some
gentle in attitude, even in their war dress; some defiant; perhaps forty
or fifty, perhaps more, ladies; a splendid display of womanhood in the
bright sunlight. Blue dresses, pink dresses, purple dresses, trimmings of
every colour; a gallant show. The eye had but just time to receive these
impressions as it were with a blow of the camera--instantaneous
photography--when, boom! the groundswell was on them, and, heavens, what
a change! They disappeared. An arm projected here, possibly a foot
yonder, tresses floated on the surface like seaweed, but bodily they were
gone. The whole rank from end to end was overthrown--more than that,
overwhelmed, buried, interred in water like Pharaoh's army in the Red
Sea. Crush! It had come on them like a mountain. The wave so clear, so
beautifully coloured, so cool and refreshing, had struck their delicate
bodies with the force of a ton weight. Crestless and smooth to look at,
in reality that treacherous roller weighed at least a ton to a yard.

Down went each fair bather as if hit with shot from a Gatling gun. Down
she went, frantically, and vainly grasping at a useless rope; down with
water driven into her nostrils, with a fragment, a tiny blade, of seaweed
forced into her throat, choking her; crush on the hard pebbles, no
feather bed, with the pressure of a ton of water overhead, and the
strange rushing roar it makes in the ears. Down she went, and at the same
time was dragged head foremost, sideways, anyhow, but dragged--_ground_
along on the bitter pebbles some yards higher up the beach, each pebble
leaving its own particular bruise, and the suspended sand filling the
eyes. Then the wave left her, and she awoke from the watery nightmare to
the bright sunlight, and the hissing foam as it subsided, prone at full
length, high and dry like a stranded wreck. Perhaps her head had tapped
the wheel of the machine in a friendly way--a sort of genial battering
ram. The defeat was a perfect rout; yet they recovered position
immediately. I fancy I did see one slip limply to cover; but the main
body rose manfully, and picked their way with delicate feet on the hard,
hard stones back again to the water, again to meet their inevitable fate.

The white ankles of the blonde gleaming in the sunshine were
distinguishable, even at that distance, from the flesh tint of the
brunette beside her, and these again from the swarthiness of still darker
ankles, which did not gleam, but had a subdued colour like dead gold. The
foam of a lesser wave ran up and touched their feet submissively. Three
young girls in pink clustered together; one crouched with her back to the
sea and glanced over her timorous shoulder. Another lesser wave ran up
and left a fringe of foam before them. I looked for a moment out to sea
and saw the smack roll heavily, the big wave was coming. By now the
bathers had gathered confidence, and stepped, a little way at a time,
closer and closer down to the water. Some even stood where each lesser
wave rose to their knees. Suddenly a few leant forwards, pulling their
ropes taut, and others turned sideways; these were the more experienced
or observant. Boom! The big roller broke near the pier and then ran along
the shore; it did not strike the whole length at once, it came in aslant
and rushed sideways. The three in pink went first--they were not far
enough from their machine to receive its full force, it barely reached to
the waist, and really I think it was worse for them. They were lifted off
their feet and shot forward with their heads under water; one appeared to
be under the two others, a confused mass of pink. Their white feet
emerged behind the roller, and as it sank it drew them back, grinding
them over the pebbles: every one knows how pebbles grate and grind their
teeth as a wave subsides. Left lying on their faces, I guessed from their
attitudes that they had dug their finger-nails into the pebbles in an
effort to seize something that would hold. Somehow they got on their
knees and crept up the slope of the beach. Beyond these three some had
been standing about up to their knees; these were simply buried as
before--quite concealed and thrown like beams of timber, head first, feet
first, high up on shore. Group after group went down as the roller
reached them, and the sea was dyed for a minute with blue dresses, purple
dresses, pink dresses; they coloured the wave which submerged them. From
end to end the whole rank was again overwhelmed, nor did any position
prove of advantage; those who sprang up as the wave came were simply
turned over and carried on their backs, those who tried to dive under
were swept back by the tremendous under-rush. Sitting on the beach, lying
at full length, on hands and knees, lying on this side or that, doubled
up--there they were, as the roller receded, in every disconsolate
attitude imaginable; the curtain rose and disclosed the stage in
disorder. Again I thought I saw one or two limp to their machines, but
the main body adjusted themselves and faced the sea.

Was there ever such courage? National untaught courage--inbred, and not
built of gradual instruction as it were in hardihood. Yet some people
hesitate to give women the franchise! actually, a miserable privilege
which any poor fool of a man may exercise.

I was philosophising admirably in this strain when first a shadow came
and then the substance, that is, a gentleman sat down by me and wished me
good morning, in a slightly different accent to that we usually hear. I
looked wistfully at the immense length of empty seats; on both sides of
the pier for two hundred yards or more there extended an endless empty
seat. Why could not he have chosen a spot to himself? Why must he place
himself just here, so close as to touch me? Four hundred yards of vacant
seats, and he could not find room for himself.

It is a remarkable fact in natural history that one's elbow is sure to be
jogged. It does not matter what you do; suppose you paint in the most
secluded spot, and insert yourself, moreover, in the most inconspicuous
part of that spot, some vacant physiognomy is certain to intrude, glaring
at you with glassy eye. Suppose you do nothing (like myself), no matter
where you do it some inane humanity obtrudes itself. I took out my
note-book once in a great open space at the Tower of London, a sort of
court or place of arms, quite open and a gunshot across; there was no one
in sight, and if there had been half a regiment they could have passed
(and would have passed) without interference. I had scarcely written
three lines when the pencil flew up the page, some hulking lout having
brushed against me. He could not find room for himself. A hundred yards
of width was not room enough for him to go by. He meant no harm; it did
not occur to him that he could be otherwise than welcome. He was the sort
of man who calmly sleeps on your shoulder in a train, and merely replaces
his head if you wake him twenty times. The very same thing has happened
to me in the parks, and in country fields; particularly it happens at the
British Museum and the picture galleries, there is room sufficient in all
conscience; but if you try to make a note or a rough memorandum sketch
you get a jog. There is a jogger everywhere, just as there is a buzzing
fly everywhere in summer. The jogger travels, too.

One day, while studying in the Louvre, I am certain three or four hundred
French people went by me, mostly provincials I fancy, country-folks, in
short, from their dress, which was not Parisian, and their accent, which
was not of the Boulevards. Of all these not one interfered with me; they
did not approach within four or five feet. How grateful I felt towards
them! One man and his sweetheart, a fine southern girl with dark eyes and
sun-browned cheeks, sat down near me on one of the scanty seats provided.
The man put his umbrella and his hat on the seat beside him. What could
be more natural? No one else was there, and there was room for three more
couples. Instantly an official--an authority!--stepped hastily forward
from the shadow of some sculpture (beasts of prey abide in darkness),
snatched up the umbrella and hat, and rudely dashed them on the floor. In
a flow of speech he explained that nothing must be placed on the seats.
The man, who had his handkerchief in his hand, quietly dropped it into
his hat on the floor, and replied nothing. This was an official "jogger."
I felt indignant to see and hear people treated in this rough manner; but
the provincial was used to the jogger system and heeded it not. My own
jogger was coming. Three to four hundred country-folk had gone by gently
and in a gentlemanly way. Then came an English gentleman, middle-aged,
florid, not much tinctured with art or letters, but garnished with huge
gold watchchain and with wealth as it were bulging out of his waistcoat
pocket. This gentleman positively walked into me, pushed me-literally
pushed me aside and took my place, a place valuable to me at that moment
for one special aspect, and having shoved me aside, gazed about him
through his eyeglass, I suppose to discover what it was interested me. He
was a genuine, thoroughbred jogger. The vast galleries of the Louvre had
not room enough for him. He was one of the most successful joggers in the
world, I feel sure; any family might be proud of him. While I am thus
digressing, the bathers have gone over thrice.

The individual who had sat himself down by me produced a little box and
offered me a lozenge. I did not accept it; he took one himself in token
that they were harmless. Then he took a second, and a third, and began to
tell me of their virtues; they cured this and they alleviated that, they
were the greatest discovery of the age; this universal lozenge was health
in the waistcoat pocket, a medicine-chest between finger and thumb; the
secret had been extracted at last, and nature had given up the ghost as
it were of her hidden physic. His eloquence conjured up in my mind a
vision of the rocks beside the Hudson river papered over with acres of
advertising posters. But no; by his further conversation I found that I
had mentally slandered him; he was not a proprietor of patent medicine;
he was a man of education and private means; he belonged to a much higher
profession, in fact he was a "jogger" travelling about from place to
place--"globetrotting" from capital city to watering-place--all over the
world in the exercise of his function. I had wondered if his accent was
American (petroleum-American), or German, or Italian, or Russian, or
what. Now I wondered no longer, for the jogger is cosmopolitan. When he
had exhausted his lozenge he told me how many times the screw of the
steamer revolved while carrying him across the Pacific from Yokohama to
San Francisco. I nearly suggested that it was about equal to the number
of times his tongue had vibrated in the last ten minutes. The bathers
went over twice more. I was anxious to take note of their bravery, and
turned aside, leaning over the iron back of the seat. He went on just the
same; a hint was no more to him than a feather bed to an ironclad.

My rigid silence was of no avail; so long as my ears were open he did not
care. He was a very energetic jogger. However, it occurred to me to try
another plan: I turned towards him (he would much rather have had my
back) and began to talk in the most strident tones I could command. I
pointed out to him that the pier was decked like a vessel, that the
cliffs were white, that a lady passing had a dark blue dress on, which
did not suit with the green sea, not because it was blue, but because it
was the wrong tint of blue. I informed him that the Pavilion was once the
residence of royalty, and similar novelties; all in a string without a
semicolon. His eyes opened; he fumbled with his lozenge-box, said "Good
morning," and went on up the pier. I watched him go--English-Americano-
Germano-Franco-Prussian-Russian-Chinese-New Zealander that he was. But he
was not a man of genius; you could choke him off by talking. Still he had
effectually jogged me and spoiled my contemplative enjoyment of the
bathers' courage; upon the whole I thought I would go down on the beach
now and see them a little closer. The truth is, I suppose, that it is
people like myself who are in the wrong, or are in the way. What business
had I to make a note in the Tower yard, or study in the Louvre? what
business have I to think, or indulge myself in an idea? What business has
any man to paint, or sketch, or do anything of the sort? I suppose the
joggers are in the right.

Dawdling down Whitehall one day a jogger nailed me--they come to me like
flies to honey--and got me to look at his pamphlet. He went about, he
said, all his time distributing them as a duty for the safety of the
nation. The pamphlet was printed in the smallest type, and consisted of
extracts from various prophetical authors, pointing out the enormity of
the Babylonian Woman, of the City of Scarlet, or some such thing; the
gist being the bitterest--almost scurrilous--attack on the Church of
Rome. The jogger told me, with tears of pride in his eyes and a glorified
countenance, that only a few days before, in the waiting-room of a
railway station, he had the pleasure to present his pamphlet to Cardinal
Manning. And the Cardinal bowed and put it in his pocket.

Just as everybody walks on the sunny side of Regent-street, so there are
certain spots on the beach where people crowd together. This is one of
them; just west of the West Pier there is a fair between eleven and one
every bright morning. Everybody goes because everybody else does. Mamma
goes down to bathe with her daughters and the little ones; they take two
machines at least; the pater comes to smoke his cigar; the young fellows
of the family-party come to look at "the women," as they irreverently
speak of the sex. So the story runs on _ad infinitum_, down to the
shoeless ones that turn up everywhere. Every seat is occupied; the boats
and small yachts are filled; some of the children pour pebbles into the
boats, some carefully throw them out; wooden spades are busy; sometimes
they knock each other on the head with them, sometimes they empty pails
of sea-water on a sister's frock. There is a squealing, squalling,
screaming, shouting, singing, bawling, howling, whistling,
tin-trumpeting, and every luxury of noise. Two or three bands work away;
niggers clatter their bones; a conjurer in red throws his heels in the
air; several harps strum merrily different strains; fruit-sellers push
baskets into folks' faces; sellers of wretched needlework and singular
baskets coated with shells thrust their rubbish into people's laps. These
shell baskets date from George IV. The gingerbeer men and the newsboys
cease not from troubling. Such a volume of uproar, such a complete organ
of discord I mean a whole organful cannot be found anywhere else on the
face of the earth in so comparatively small a space. It is a sort of
triangular plot of beach crammed with everything that ordinarily annoys
the ears and offends the sight.

Yet you hear nothing and see nothing; it is perfectly comfortable,
perfectly jolly and exhilarating, a preferable spot to any other. A
sparkle of sunshine on the breakers, a dazzling gleam from the white
foam, a warm sweet air, light and brightness and champagniness;
altogether lovely. The way in which people lie about on the beach, their
legs this way, and their arms that, their hats over their eyes, their
utter give-themselves-up expression of attitude is enough in itself to
make a reasonable being contented. Nobody cares for anybody; they drowned
Mrs. Grundy long ago. The ancient philosopher (who had a mind to eat a
fig) held that a nail driven into wood could only support a certain
weight. After that weight was exceeded either the wood must break or the
nail come out. Yonder is a wooden seat put together with nails--a flimsy
contrivance, which defies all rules of gravity and adhesion. One leg
leans one way, the other in the opposite direction; very lame legs
indeed. Careful folk would warn you not to sit on it lest it should come
to pieces. The music, I suppose, charms it, for it holds together in the
most marvellous manner. Four people are sitting on it, four big ones,
middle-aged, careful people; every moment the legs gape wide apart, the
structure visibly stretches and yields and sinks in the pebbles, yet it
does not come down. The stoutest of all sits actually over the lame legs,
reading his paper quite oblivious of the odd angle his plump person
makes, quite unconscious of the threatened crack--crash! It does not
happen. A sort of magnetism sticks it together; it is in the air; it
makes things go right that ought to go wrong. Awfully naughty place; no
sort of idea of rightness here. Humming and strumming, and singing and
smoking, splashing, and sparkling; a buzz of voices and booming of sea!
If they could only be happy like this always!

Mamma has a tremendous fight over the bathing-dresses, her own, of
course; the bathing woman cannot find them, and denies that she had them,
and by-and-by, after half an hour's exploration, finds them all right,
and claims commendation for having put them away so safely. Then there is
the battle for a machine. The nurse has been keeping guard on the steps,
to seize it the instant the occupant comes out. At last they get it, and
the wonder is how they pack themselves in it. Boom! The bathers have gone
over again, I know. The rope stretches as the men at the capstan go
round, and heave up the machines one by one before the devouring tide.

As it is not at all rude, but the proper thing to do, I thought I would
venture a little nearer (not too obtrusively near) and see closer at hand
how brave womanhood faced the rollers. There was a young girl lying at
full length at the edge of the foam. She reclined parallel to the beach,
not with her feet towards the sea, but so that it came to her side. She
was clad in some material of a gauzy and yet opaque texture, permitting
the full outline and the least movement to be seen. The colour I do not
exactly know how to name; they could tell you at the Magasin du Louvre,
where men understand the hues of garments as well as women. I presume it
was one of the many tints that are called at large "creamy." It suited
her perfectly. Her complexion was in the faintest degree swarthy, and yet
not in the least like what a lady would associate with that word. The
difficulty in describing a colour is that different people take different
views of the terms employed; ladies have one scale founded a good deal on
dress, men another, and painters have a special (and accurate) gamut
which they use in the studio. This was a clear swarthiness a translucent
swarthiness clear as the most delicate white. There was something in the
hue of her neck as freely shown by the loose bathing dress, of her bare
arms and feet, somewhat recalling to mind the kind of beauty attributed
to the Queen of Egypt. But it was more delicate. Her form was almost
fully developed, more so than usual at her age. Again and again the foam
rushed up deep enough to cover her limbs, but not sufficiently so to hide
her chest, as she was partly raised on one arm. Washed thus with the
purest whiteness of the sparkling foam, her beauty gathered increase from
the touch of the sea. She swayed slightly as the water reached her, she
was luxuriously recked to and fro. The waves, toyed with her; they came
and retired, happy in her presence; the breeze and the sunshine were
there.

Standing somewhat back, the machines hid the waves from me till they
reached the shore, so that I did not observe the heavy roller till it
came and broke. A ton of water fell on her, crush! The edge of the wave
curled and dropped over her, the arch bowed itself above her, the
keystone of the wave fell in. She was under the surge while it rushed up
and while it rushed back; it carried her up to the steps of the machine
and back again to her original position. When it subsided she simply
shook her head, raised herself on one arm, and adjusted herself parallel
to the beach as before.

Let any one try this, let any one lie for a few minutes just where the
surge bursts, and he will understand what it means. Men go out to the
length of their ropes--past and outside the line of the breakers, or they
swim still farther out and ride at ease where the wave, however large,
merely lifts them pleasantly as it rolls under. But the smashing force of
the wave is where it curls and breaks, and it is there that the ladies
wait for it. It is these breakers in a gale that tear to pieces and
destroy the best-built ships once they touch the shore, scattering their
timbers as the wind scatters leaves. The courage and the endurance women
must possess to face a groundswell like this!

All the year they live in luxury and ease, and are shielded from
everything that could hurt. A bruise--a lady to receive a bruise; it is
not be to thought of! If a ruffian struck a lady in Hyde Park the world
would rise from its armchair in a fury of indignation. These waves and
pebbles bruise them as they list. They do not even flinch. There must,
then, be a natural power of endurance in them.

It is unnecessary, and yet I was proud to see it. An English lady could
do it; but could any other?--unless, indeed, an American of English
descent. Still, it is a barbarous thing, for bathing could be easily
rendered pleasant. The cruel roller receded, the soft breeze blew, the
sunshine sparkled, the gleaming foam rushed up and gently rocked her. The
Infanta Cleopatra lifted her arm gleaming wet with spray, and extended it
indolently; the sun had only given her a more seductive loveliness. How
much more enjoyable the sea and breeze and sunshine when one is gazing at
something so beautiful. That arm, rounded and soft----

"Excuse me, sir, but your immortal soul"--a hand was placed on my elbow.
I turned, and saw a beaming face; a young lady, elegantly dressed, placed
a fly-sheet of good intentions in my fingers. The fair jogger beamed yet
more sweetly as I took it, and went on among the crowd. When I looked
back the Infanta Cleopatra had ascended into her machine. I had lost the
last few moments of loveliness.



UNDER THE ACORNS


Coming along a woodland lane, a small round and glittering object in the
brushwood caught my attention. The ground was but just hidden in that
part of the wood with a thin growth of brambles, low, and more like
creepers than anything else. These scarcely hid the surface, which was
brown with the remnants of oak-leaves; there seemed so little cover,
indeed, that a mouse might have been seen. But at that spot some great
spurge-plants hung this way and that, leaning aside, as if the sterns
were too weak to uphold the heads of dark-green leaves. Thin grasses,
perfectly white, bleached by the sun and dew, stood in a bunch by the
spurge; their seeds had fallen, the last dregs of sap had dried within
them, there was nothing left but the bare stalks. A creeper of bramble
fenced round one side of the spurge and white grass bunch, and brown
leaves were visible on the surface of the ground through the interstices
of the spray. It was in the midst of this little thicket that a small,
dark, and glittering object caught my attention. I knew it was the eye of
some creature at once, but, supposing it nothing more than a young
rabbit, was passing on, thinking of other matters, when it occurred to
me, before I could finish the step I had taken, so quick is thought, that
the eye was not large enough to be that of a rabbit. I stopped; the black
glittering eye had gone--the creature had lowered its neck, but
immediately noticing that I was looking in that direction, it cautiously
raised itself a little, and I saw at once that the eye was the eye of a
bird. This I knew first by its size, and next by its position in relation
to the head, which was invisible--for had it been a rabbit or hare, its
ears would have projected. The moment after, the eye itself confirmed
this--the nictitating membrane was rapidly drawn over it, and as rapidly
removed. This membrane is the distinguishing mark of a bird's eye. But
what bird? Although I was within two yards, I could not even see its
head, nothing but the glittering eyeball, on which the light of the sun
glinted. The sunbeams came over my shoulder straight into the bird's
face.

Without moving--which I did not wish to do, as it would disturb the
bird--I could not see its plumage; the bramble spray in front, the spurge
behind, and the bleached grasses at the side, perfectly concealed it.
Only two birds I considered would be likely to squat and remain quiescent
like this--partridge or pheasant; but I could not contrive to view the
least portion of the neck. A moment afterwards the eye came up again, and
the bird slightly moved its head, when I saw its beak, and knew it was a
pheasant immediately. I then stepped forward--almost on the bird--and a
young pheasant rose, and flew between the tree-trunks to a deep dry
watercourse, where it disappeared under some withering yellow-ferns.

Of course I could easily have solved the problem long before, merely by
startling the bird; but what would have been the pleasure of that? Any
plough-lad could have forced the bird to rise, and would have recognised
it as a pheasant; to me, the pleasure consisted in discovering it under
every difficulty. That was woodcraft; to kick the bird up would have been
simply nothing at all. Now I found why I could not see the pheasant's
neck or body; it was not really concealed, but shaded out by the mingled
hues of white grasses, the brown leaves of the surface, and the general
grey-brown tints. Now it was gone, there was a vacant space its plumage
had filled up that vacant space with hues so similar, that, at no farther
distance than two yards, I did not recognise it by colour. Had the bird
fully carried out its instinct of concealment, and kept its head down as
well as its body, I should have passed it. Nor should I have seen its
head if it had looked the other way; the eye betrayed its presence. The
dark glittering eye, which the sunlight touched, caught my attention
instantly. There is nothing like an eye in inanimate nature; no flower,
no speck on a bough, no gleaming stone wet with dew, nothing, indeed, to
which it can be compared. The eye betrayed it; I could not overlook an
eye. Neither nature nor inherited experience had taught the pheasant to
hide its eye; the bird not only wished to conceal itself, but to watch my
motions and, looking up from its cover, was immediately observed.

At a turn of the lane there was a great heap of oak "chumps," crooked
logs, sawn in lengths, and piled together. They were so crooked, it was
difficult to find a seat, till I hit on one larger than the rest. The
pile of "chunks" rose halfway up the stem of an oak tree, and formed a
wall of wood at my back; the oak-boughs reached over and made a pleasant
shade. The sun was warm enough, to render resting in the open air
delicious, the wind cool enough to prevent the heat becoming too great;
the pile of timber kept off the draught, so that I could stay and listen
to the gentle "hush, rush" of the breeze in the oak above me; "hush" as
it came slowly, "rush" as it came fast, and a low undertone as it nearly
ceased. So thick were the haws on a bush of thorn opposite, that they
tinted the hedge a red colour among the yellowing hawthorn-leaves. To
this red hue the blackberries that were not ripe, the thick dry red
sorrel stalks, a bright canker on a brier almost as bright as a rose,
added their colours. Already the foliage of the bushes had been thinned,
and it was possible to see through the upper parts of the boughs. The
sunlight, therefore, not only touched their outer surfaces, but passed
through and lit up the branches within, and the wild-fruit upon them.
Though the sky was clear and blue between the clouds, that is, without
mist or haze, the sunbeams were coloured the faintest yellow, as they
always are on a ripe autumn day. This yellow shone back from grass and
leaves, from bough and tree-trunk, and seemed to stain the ground. It is
very pleasant to the eyes, a soft, delicate light, that gives another
beauty to the atmosphere. Some roan cows were wandering down the lane,
feeding on the herbage at the side; their colour, too, was lit up by the
peculiar light, which gave a singular softness to the large shadows of
the trees upon the sward. In a meadow by the wood the oaks cast broad
shadows on the short velvety sward, not so sharp and definite as those of
summer, but tender, and, as it were, drawn with a loving hand. They were
large shadows, though it was mid-day--a sign that the sun was no longer
at his greatest height, but declining. In July, they would scarcely have
extended beyond the rim of the boughs; the rays would have dropped
perpendicularly, now they slanted. Pleasant as it was, there was regret
in the thought that the summer was going fast. Another sign--the grass by
the gateway, an acre of it, was brightly yellow with hawkweeds, and under
these were the last faded brown heads of meadow clover; the brown, the
bright yellow disks, the green grass, the tinted sunlight falling upon
it, caused a wavering colour that fleeted before the glance.

All things brown, and yellow, and red, are brought out by the autumn sun;
the brown furrows freshly turned where the stubble was yesterday, the
brown bark of trees, the brown fallen leaves, the brown stalks of plants;
the red haws, the red unripe blackberries, red bryony berries,
reddish-yellow fungi, yellow hawkweed, yellow ragwort, yellow
hazel-leaves, elms, spots in lime or beech; not a speck of yellow, red,
or brown the yellow sunlight does not find out. And these make autumn,
with the caw of rooks, the peculiar autumn caw of laziness and full
feeding, the sky blue as March between the great masses of dry cloud
floating over, the mist in the distant valleys, the tinkle of traces as
the plough turns and the silence of the woodland birds. The lark calls as
he rises from the earth, the swallows still wheeling call as they go
over, but the woodland birds are mostly still and the restless sparrows
gone forth in a cloud to the stubble. Dry clouds, because they evidently
contain no moisture that will fall as rain here; thick mists, condensed
haze only, floating on before the wind. The oaks were not yet yellow,
their leaves were half green, half brown; Time had begun to invade them,
but had not yet indented his full mark.

Of the year there are two most pleasurable seasons: the spring, when the
oak-leaves come russet-brown on the great oaks; the autumn, when the
oak-leaves begin to turn. At the one, I enjoy the summer that is coming;
at the other, the summer that is going. At either, there is a freshness
in the atmosphere, a colour everywhere, a depth of blue in the sky, a
welcome in the woods. The redwings had not yet come; the acorns were
full, but still green; the greedy rooks longed to see them riper. They
were very numerous, the oaks covered with them, a crop for the greedy
rooks, the greedier pigeons, the pheasants, and the jays.

One thing I missed--the corn. So quickly was the harvest gathered, that
those who delight in the colour of the wheat had no time to enjoy it. If
any painter had been looking forward to August to enable him to paint the
corn, he must have been disappointed. There was no time; the sun came,
saw, and conquered, and the sheaves were swept from the field. Before yet
the reapers had entered one field of ripe wheat, I did indeed for a brief
evening obtain a glimpse of the richness and still beauty of an English
harvest. The sun was down, and in the west a pearly grey light spread
widely, with a little scarlet drawn along its lower border. Heavy shadows
hung in the foliage of the elms, the clover had closed, and the quiet
moths had taken the place of the humming bees. Southwards, the full moon,
a red-yellow disk, shone over the wheat, which appeared the finest pale
amber. A quiver of colour--an undulation--seemed to stay in the air, left
from the heated day; the sunset hues and those of the red-tinted moon
fell as it were into the remnant of day, and filled the wheat; they were
poured into it, so that it grew in their colours. Still heavier the
shadows deepened in the elms; all was silence, save for the sound of the
reapers on the other side of the hedge, slash--rustle, slash--rustle, and
the drowsy night came down as softly as an eyelid.

While I sat on the log under the oak, every now and then wasps came to
the crooked pieces of sawn timber, which had been barked. They did not
appear to be biting it--they can easily snip off fragments of the hardest
oak,--they merely alighted and examined it, and went on again. Looking at
them, I did not notice the lane till something moved, and two young
pheasants ran by along the middle of the track and into the cover at the
side. The grass at the edge which they pushed through closed behind them,
and feeble as it was--grass only--it shut off the interior of the cover
as firmly as iron bars. The pheasant is a strong lock upon the woods;
like one of Chubb's patent locks, he closes the woods as firmly as an
iron safe can be shut. Wherever the pheasant is artificially reared, and
a great "head" kept up for battue-shooting, there the woods are sealed.
No matter if the wanderer approach with the most harmless of intentions,
it is exactly the same as if he were a species of burglar. The botanist,
the painter, the student of nature, all are met with the high-barred gate
and the throat of law. Of course, the pheasant-lock can be opened by the
silver key; still, there is the fact, that since pheasants have been bred
on so large a scale, half the beautiful woodlands of England have been
fastened up. Where there is no artificial rearing there is much more
freedom; those who love the forest can roam at their pleasure, for it is
not the fear of damage that locks the gate, but the pheasant. In every
sense, the so-called sport of battue-shooting is injurious--injurious to
the sportsman, to the poorer class, to the community. Every true
sportsman should discourage it, and indeed does. I was talking with a
thorough sportsman recently, who told me, to my delight, that he never
reared birds by hand; yet he had a fair supply, and could always give a
good day's sport, judged as any reasonable man would judge sport. Nothing
must enter the domains of the hand-reared pheasant; even the nightingale
is not safe. A naturalist has recorded that in a district he visited, the
nightingales were always shot by the keepers and their eggs smashed,
because the singing of these birds at night disturbed the repose of the
pheasants! They also always stepped on the eggs of the fern-owl, which
are laid on the ground, and shot the bird if they saw it, for the same
reason, as it makes a jarring sound at dusk. The fern-owl, or goatsucker,
is one of the most harmless of birds--a sort of evening swallow--living
on moths, chafers, and similar night-flying insects.

Continuing my walk, still under the oaks and green acorns, I wondered why
I did not meet any one. There was a man cutting fern in the wood--a
labourer--and another cutting up thistles in a field; but with the
exception of men actually employed and paid, I did not meet a single
person, though the lane I was following is close to several well-to-do
places. I call that a well-to-do place where there are hundreds of large
villas inhabited by wealthy people. It is true that the great majority of
persons have to attend to business, even if they enjoy a good income;
still, making every allowance for such a necessity, it is singular how
few, how very few, seem to appreciate the quiet beauty of this lovely
country. Somehow, they do not seem to see it--to look over it; there is
no excitement in it, for one thing. They can see a great deal in Paris,
but nothing in an English meadow. I have often wondered at the rarity of
meeting any one in the fields, and yet--curious anomaly--if you point out
anything--or describe it, the interest exhibited is marked. Every one
takes an interest, but no one goes to see for himself. For instance,
since the natural history collection was removed from the British Museum
to a separate building at South Kensington, it is stated that the
visitors to the Museum have fallen from an average of twenty-five hundred
a day to one thousand; the inference is, that out of every twenty-five,
fifteen came to see the natural history cases. Indeed, it is difficult to
find a person who does not take an interest in some department of natural
history, and yet I scarcely ever meet any one in the fields. You may meet
many in the autumn far away in places famous for scenery, but almost none
in the meadows at home.

I stayed by a large pond to look at the shadows of the trees on the green
surface of duckweed. The soft green of the smooth weed received the
shadows as if specially prepared to show them to advantage. The more the
tree was divided--the more interlaced its branches and less laden with
foliage, the more it "came out" on the green surface; each slender twig
was reproduced, and sometimes even the leaves. From an oak, and from a
lime, leaves had fallen, and remained on the green weed; the flags by the
shore were turning brown; a tint of yellow was creeping up the rashes,
and the great trunk of a fir shone reddish brown in the sunlight. There
was colour even about the still pool, where the weeds grew so thickly
that the moorhens could scarcely swim through them.



DOWNS


A good road is recognised as the groundwork of civilisation. So long as
there is a firm and artificial track under his feet the traveller may be
said to be in contact with city and town, no matter how far they may be
distant. A yard or two outside the railway in America the primeval forest
or prairie often remains untouched, and much in the same way, though in a
less striking degree at first sight, some of our own highways winding
through Down districts are bounded by undisturbed soil. Such a road wears
for itself a hollow, and the bank at the top is fringed with long rough
grass hanging over the crumbling chalk. Broad discs of greater knapweed
with stalks like wire, and yellow toad-flax with spotted lip grow among
it. Grasping this tough grass as a handle to climb up by, the explorer
finds a rising slope of sward, and having walked over the first ridge,
shutting off the road behind him, is at once out of civilisation. There
is no noise. Wherever there are men there is a hum, even in the
harvest-field; and in the road below, though lonely, there is sometimes
the sharp clatter of hoofs or the grating of wheels on flints. But here
the long, long slopes, the endless ridges, the gaps between, hazy and
indistinct, are absolutely without noise. In the sunny autumn day the
peace of the sky overhead is reflected in the silent earth. Looking out
over the steep hills, the first impression is of an immense void like the
sea; but there are sounds in detail, the twitter of passing swallows, the
restless buzz of bees at the thyme, the rush of the air beaten by a
ringdove's wings. These only increase the sense of silent peace, for in
themselves they soothe; and how minute the bee beside this hill, and the
dove to the breadth of the sky! A white speck of thistledown comes upon a
current too light to swing a harebell or be felt by the cheek. The
furze-bushes are lined with thistledown, blown there by a breeze now
still; it is glossy in the sunbeams, and the yellow hawkweeds cluster
beneath. The sweet, clear air, though motionless at this height, cools
the rays; but the sun seems to pause and neither to rise higher nor
decline. It is the space open to the eye which apparently arrests his
movement. There is no noise, and there are no men.

Glance along the slope, up the ridge, across to the next, endeavour to
penetrate the hazy gap, but no one is visible. In reality it is not quite
so vacant; there may, perhaps, be four or five men between this spot and
the gap, which would be a pass if the Downs were high enough. One is not
far distant; he is digging flints over the ridge, and, perhaps, at this
moment rubbing the earth from a corroded Roman coin which he has found in
the pit. Another is thatching, for there are three detached wheat-ricks
round a spur of the Down a mile away, where the plain is arable, and
there, too, a plough is at work. A shepherd is asleep on his back behind
the furze a mile in the other direction. The fifth is a lad trudging with
a message; he is in the nut-copse, over the next hill, very happy. By
walking a mile the explorer may, perhaps, sight one of these, if they
have not moved by then and disappeared in another hollow. And when you
have walked the mile--knowing the distance by the time occupied in
traversing it--if you look back you will sigh at the hopelessness of
getting over the hills. The mile is such a little way, only just along
one slope and down into the narrow valley strewn with flints and small
boulders. If that is a mile, it must be another up to the white chalk
quarry yonder, another to the copse on the ridge; and how far is the hazy
horizon where the ridges crowd on and hide each other? Like rowing at
sea, you row and row and row, and seem where you started--waves in front
and waves behind; so you may walk and walk and walk, and still there is
the intrenchment on the summit, at the foot of which, well in sight, you
were resting some hours ago.

Rest again by the furze, and some goldfinches come calling shrilly and
feasting undisturbed upon the seeds of thistles and other plants. The
bird-catcher does not venture so far; he would if there was a rail near;
but he is a lazy fellow, fortunately, and likes not the weight of his own
nets. When the stubbles are ploughed there will be troops of finches and
linnets up here, leaving the hedgerows of the valley almost deserted.
Shortly the fieldfares will come, but not generally till the redwings
have appeared below in the valleys; while the fieldfares go upon the
hills, the green plovers, as autumn comes on, gather in flocks and go
down to the plains. Hawks regularly beat along the furze, darting on a
finch now and then, and owls pass by at night. Nightjars, too, are
down-land birds, staying in woods or fern by day, and swooping on the
moths which flutter about the furze in the evening. Crows are too common,
and work on late into the shadows. Sometimes, in getting over the low
hedges which divide the uncultivated sward from the ploughed lands, you
almost step on a crow, and it is difficult to guess what he can have been
about so earnestly, for search reveals nothing--no dead lamb, hare, or
carrion, or anything else is visible. Rooks, of course, are seen, and
larks, and once or twice in a morning a magpie, seldom seen in the
cultivated and preserved valley. There are more partridges than rigid
game preservers would deem possible where the overlooking, if done at
all, is done so carelessly. Partridges will never cease out of the land
while there are untouched downs. Of all southern inland game, they afford
the finest sport; for spoil in its genuine sense cannot be had without
labour, and those who would get partridges on the hills must work for
them. Shot down, coursed, poached, killed before maturity in the corn,
still hares are fairly plentiful, and couch in the furze and coarse
grasses. Rabbits have much decreased; still there are some. But the
larger fir copses, when they are enclosed, are the resort of all kinds of
birds of prey yet left in the south, and, perhaps, more rare visitors are
found there than anywhere else. Isolated on the open hills, such a copse
to birds is like an island in the sea. Only a very few pheasants frequent
it, and little effort is made to exterminate the wilder creatures, while
they are continually replenished by fresh arrivals. Even ocean birds
driven inland by stress of weather seem to prefer the downs to rest on,
and feel safer there.

The sward is the original sward, untouched, unploughed, centuries old. It
is that which was formed when the woods that covered the hills were
cleared, whether by British tribes whose markings are still to be found,
by Roman smiths working the ironstone (slag is sometimes discovered), by
Saxon settlers, or however it came about in the process of the years.
Probably the trees would grow again were it not for sheep and horses, but
these preserve the sward. The plough has nibbled at it and gnawed away
great slices, but it extends mile after mile; these are mere touches on
its breadth. It is as wild as wild can be without deer or savage beasts.
The bees like it, and the finches come. It is silent and peaceful like
the sky above. By night the stars shine, not only overhead and in a
narrow circle round the zenith, but down to the horizon; the walls of the
sky are built up of them as well as the roof. The sliding meteors go
silently over the gleaming surface; silently the planets rise; silently
the earth moves to the unfolding east. Sometimes a lunar rainbow appears;
a strange scene at midnight, arching over almost from the zenith down
into the dark hollow of the valley. At the first glance it seems white,
but presently faint prismatic colours are discerned.

Already as the summer changes into autumn there are orange specks on the
beeches in the copses, and the firs will presently be leafless. Then
those who live in the farmsteads placed at long intervals begin to
prepare for the possibilities of the winter. There must be a good store
of fuel and provisions, for it will be difficult to go down to the
villages. The ladies had best add as many new volumes as they can to the
bookshelf, for they may be practically imprisoned for weeks together.
Wind and rain are very different here from what they are where the
bulwark of the houses shelters one side of the street, or the thick hedge
protects half the road. The fury of the storm is unchecked, and nothing
can keep out the raindrops which come with the velocity of shot. If snow
falls, as it does frequently, it does not need much to obscure the path;
at all times the path is merely a track, and the ruts worn down to the
white chalk and the white snow confuse the eyes. Flecks of snow catch
against the bunches of grass, against the furze-bushes, and boulders; if
there is a ploughed field, against every clod, and the result is
bewildering. There is nothing to guide the steps, nothing to give the
general direction, and once off the track, unless well accustomed to the
district, the traveller may wander in vain. After a few inches have
fallen the roads are usually blocked, for all the flakes on miles of
hills are swept along and deposited into hollows where the highways run.
To be dug out now and then in the winter is a contingency the mail-driver
reckons as part of his daily life, and the waggons going to and fro
frequently pass between high walls of frozen snow. In these wild places,
which can scarcely be said to be populated at all, a snow-storm, however,
does not block the King's highways and paralyse traffic as London permits
itself to be paralysed under similar circumstances. Men are set to work
and cut a way through in a very short time, and no one makes the least
difficulty about it. But with the tracks that lead to isolated farmsteads
it is different; there is not enough traffic to require the removal of
the obstruction, and the drifts occasionally accumulate to twenty feet
deep. The ladies are imprisoned, and must be thankful if they have got
down a box of new novels.

The dread snow-tempest of 1880-81 swept over these places with tremendous
fury, and the most experienced shepherds, whose whole lives had been
spent going to and fro on the downs, frequently lost their way. There is
a story of a waggoner and his lad going slowly along the road after the
thaw, and noticing an odd-looking scarecrow in a field. They went to it,
and found it was a man, dead, and still standing as he had stiffened in
the snow, the clothes hanging on his withered body, and the eyes gone
from the sockets, picked out by the crows. It is only one of many similar
accounts, and it is thought between twenty and thirty unfortunate persons
perished. Such miserable events are of rare occurrence, but show how
open, wild, and succourless the country still remains. In ordinary
winters it is only strangers who need be cautious, and strangers seldom
appear. Even in summer time, however, a stranger, if he stays till dusk,
may easily wander for hours. Once off the highway, all the ridges and
slopes seem alike, and there is no end to them.



FOREST


The beechnuts are already falling in the forest, and the swine are
beginning to search for them while yet the harvest lingers. The nuts are
formed by midsummer, and now, the husk opening, the brown angular kernel
drops out. Many of the husks fall, too; others remain on the branches
till next spring. Under the beeches the ground is strewn with the mast as
hard almost to walk on as pebbles. Rude and uncouth as swine are in
themselves, somehow they look different under trees. The brown leaves
amid which they rout, and the brown-tinted fern behind lend something of
their colour and smooth away their ungainliness. Snorting as they work
with very eagerness of appetite, they are almost wild, approaching in a
measure to their ancestors, the savage boars. Under the trees the
imagination plays unchecked, and calls up the past as if yew bow and
broad arrow were still in the hunter's hands. So little is changed since
then. The deer are here still. Sit down on the root of this oak (thinly
covered with moss), and on that very spot it is quite possible a knight
fresh home from the Crusades may have rested and feasted his eyes on the
lovely green glades of his own unsurpassed England. The oak was there
then, young and strong; it is here now, ancient, but sturdy. Rarely do
you see an oak fall of itself. It decays to the last stump; it does not
fall. The sounds are the same--the tap as a ripe acorn drops, the rustle
of a leaf which comes down slowly, the quick rushes of mice playing in
the fern. A movement at one side attracts the glance, and there is a
squirrel darting about. There is another at the very top of the beech
yonder out on the boughs, nibbling the nuts. A brown spot a long distance
down the glade suddenly moves, and thereby shows itself to be a rabbit.
The bellowing sound that comes now and then is from the stags, which are
preparing to fight. The swine snort, and the mast and leaves rustle as
they thrust them aside. So little is changed: these are the same sounds
and the same movements, just as in the olden time.

The soft autumn sunshine, shorn of summer glare, lights up with colour
the fern, the fronds of which are yellow and brown, the leaves, the grey
grass, and hawthorn sprays already turned. It seems as if the early
morning's mists have the power of tinting leaf and fern, for so soon as
they commence the green hues begin to disappear. There are swathes of
fern yonder, cut down like grass or corn, the harvest of the forest. It
will be used for litter and for thatching sheds. The yellow stalks--the
stubble--will turn brown and wither through the winter, till the strong
spring shoot conies up and the anemones flower. Though the sunbeams reach
the ground here, half the green glade is in shadow, and for one step that
you walk in sunlight ten are in shade. Thus, partly concealed in full
day, the forest always contains a mystery. The idea that there may be
something in the dim arches held up by the round columns of the beeches
lures the footsteps onwards. Something must have been lately in the
circle under the oak where the fern and bushes remain at a distance and
wall in a lawn of green. There is nothing on the grass but the upheld
leaves that have dropped, no mark of any creature, but this is not
decisive; if there are no physical signs, there is a feeling that the
shadow is not vacant. In the thickets, perhaps--the shadowy thickets with
front of thorn--it has taken refuge and eluded us. Still onward the
shadows lead us in vain but pleasant chase.

These endless trees are a city to the tree-building birds. The round
knot-holes in the beeches, the holes in the elms and oaks; they find them
all out. From these issue the immense flocks of starlings which, when
they alight on an isolated elm in winter, make it suddenly black. From
these, too, come forth the tits, not so welcome to the farmer, as he
considers they reduce his fruit crop; and in these the gaudy woodpeckers
breed. With starlings, wood-pigeons, and rooks the forest is crowded like
a city in spring, but now in autumn it is comparatively deserted. The
birds are away in the fields, some at the grain, others watching the
plough, and following it so soon as a furrow is opened. But the stoats
are busy--they have not left, nor the weasels; and so eager are they
that, though they hide in the fern at first, in a minute or two they come
out again, and so get shot.

Like the fields, which can only support a certain proportion of cattle,
the forest, wide as it seems, can only maintain a certain number of deer.
Carrying the same thought further, it will be obvious that the forest, or
England in a natural state, could only support a limited human
population. Is this why the inhabitants of countries like France, where
they cultivate every rood and try to really keep a man to a rood, do not
increase in number? Certainly there is a limit in nature which can only
be overcome by artificial aid. After wandering for some time in a forest
like this, the impression arises that the fauna is not now large enough
to be in thorough keeping with the trees--their age and size and number.
The breadth of the arboreal landscape requires a longer list of living
creatures, and creatures of greater bulk. The stoat and weasel are lost
in bramble and fern, the squirrels in the branches; the fox is concealed,
and the badger; the rabbit, too, is small. There are only the deer, and
there is a wide gap between them and the hares. Even the few cattle which
are permitted to graze are better than nothing; though not wild, yet
standing in fern to their shoulders and browsing on the lower branches,
they are, at all events, animals for the time in nearly a natural state.
By watching them it is apparent how well the original wild cattle agreed
with the original scenery of the island. One almost regrets the marten
and polecat, though both small creatures, and wishes that the fox would
come forth more by day. These acres of bracken and impenetrable thickets
need more inhabitants; how well they are fitted for the wild boar! Such
thoughts are, of course, only thoughts, and we must be thankful that we
have as many wild creatures left as we have.

Looking at the soil as we walk, where it is exposed by the roots of a
fallen tree, or where there is an old gravel pit, the question occurs
whether forests, managed as they are in old countries, ever really
increase the fertility of the earth? That decaying vegetation produces a
fine mould cannot be disputed; but it seems here that there is no more
decaying vegetation than is required for the support of the trees
themselves. The leaves that fall--the million million leaves--blown to
and fro, at last disappear, absorbed into the ground. So with quantities
of the lesser twigs and branches; but these together do not supply more
material to the soil than is annually abstracted by the extensive roots
of trees, of bushes, and by the fern. If timber is felled, it is removed,
and the bark and boughs with it; the stump, too, is grubbed and split for
firewood. If a tree dies it is presently sawn off and cut up for some
secondary use or other. The great branches which occasionally fall are
some one's perquisite. When the thickets are thinned out, the fagots are
carted away, and much of the fern is also removed. How, then, can there
be any accumulation of fertilising material? Rather the reverse; it is,
if anything, taken away, and the soil must be less rich now than it was
in bygone centuries. Left to itself the process would be the reverse,
every tree as it fell slowly enriching the spot where it mouldered, and
all the bulk of the timber converted into fertile earth. It was in this
way that the American forests laid the foundation of the inexhaustible
wheat-lands there. But the modern management of a forest tends in the
opposite direction--too much is removed; for if it is wished to improve a
soil by the growth of timber, something must be left in it besides the
mere roots. The leaves, even, are not all left; they have a value for
gardening purposes: though, of course, the few cartloads collected make
no appreciable difference. There is always something going on in the
forest; and more men are employed than would be supposed. In the winter
the selected elms are thrown and the ash poles cut; in the spring the oak
timber comes down and is barked; in the autumn the fern is cut. Splitting
up wood goes on nearly all the year round, so that you may always hear
the axe. No charcoal-burning is practised, but the mere maintenance of
the fences, as, for instance, round the pheasant enclosures, gives much
to do. Deer need attention in winter, like cattle; the game has its
watchers; and ferreting lasts for months. So that the forest is not
altogether useless from the point of view of work. But in so many hundred
acres of trees these labourers are lost to sight, and do not in the least
detract from its wild appearance. Indeed, the occasional ring of the axe
or the smoke rising from the woodman's fire accentuates the fact that it
is a forest. The oaks keep a circle round their base and stand at a
majestic distance from each other, so that the wind and the sunshine
enter, and their precincts are sweet and pleasant. The elms gather
together, rubbing their branches in the gale till the bark is worn off
and the boughs die; the shadow is deep under them, and moist, favourable
to rank grass and coarse mushrooms. Beneath the ashes, after the first
frost, the air is full of the bitterness of their blackened leaves, which
have all come down at once. By the beeches there is little underwood, and
the hollows are filled ankle-deep with their leaves. From the pines comes
a fragrant odour, and thus the character of each group dominates the
surrounding ground. The shade is too much for many flowers, which prefer
the nooks of hedgerows. If there is no scope for the use of "express"
rifles, this southern forest really is a forest and not an open hillside.
It is a forest of trees, and there are no woodlands so beautiful and
enjoyable as these, where it is possible to be lost a while without fear
of serious consequences; where you can walk without stepping up to the
waist in a decayed tree-trunk, or floundering in a bog; where neither
venomous snake not torturing mosquito causes constant apprehensions and
constant irritation. To the eye there is nothing but beauty; to the
imagination pleasant pageants of old time; to the ear the soothing
cadence of the leaves as the gentle breeze goes over. The beeches rear
their Gothic architecture, the oaks are planted firm like castles,
unassailable. Quick squirrels climb and dart hither and thither, deer
cross the distant glade, and, occasionally, a hawk passes like thought.

The something that may be in the shadow or the thicket, the vain,
pleasant chase that beckons us on, still leads the footsteps from tree to
tree, till by-and-by a lark sings, and, going to look for it, we find the
stubble outside the forest--stubble still bright with the blue and white
flowers of grey speedwell. One of the earliest to bloom in the spring, it
continues till the plough comes again in autumn. Now looking back from
the open stubble on the high wall of trees, the touch of autumn here and
there is the more visible--oaks dotted with brown, horse chestnuts
yellow, maples orange, and the bushes beneath red with haws.



BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY


I--THE MAKING OF BEAUTY

It takes a hundred and fifty years to make a beauty--a hundred and fifty
years out-of-doors. Open air, hard manual labour or continuous exercise,
good food, good clothing, some degree of comfort, all of these, but most
especially open air, must play their part for five generations before a
beautiful woman can appear. These conditions can only be found in the
country, and consequently all beautiful women come from the country.
Though the accident of birth may cause their register to be signed in
town, they are always of country extraction.

Let us glance back a hundred and fifty years, say to 1735, and suppose a
yeoman to have a son about that time. That son would be bred upon the
hardest fare, but, though hard, it would be plentiful and of honest sort.
The bread would be home-baked, the beef salted at home, the ale
home-brewed. He would work all day in the fields with the labourers, but
he would have three great advantages over them--in good and plentiful
food, in good clothing, and in home comforts. He would ride, and join all
the athletic sports of the time. Mere manual labour stiffens the limbs,
gymnastic exercises render them supple. Thus he would obtain immense
strength from simple hard work, and agility from exercise. Here, then, is
a sound constitution, a powerful frame, well knit, hardened--an almost
perfect physical existence.

He would marry, if fortunate, at thirty or thirty-five, naturally
choosing the most charming of his acquaintances. She would be equally
healthy and proportionally as strong, for the ladies of those days were
accustomed to work from childhood. By custom soon after marriage she
would work harder than before, notwithstanding her husband's fair store
of guineas in the iron-bound box. The house, the dairy, the cheese-loft,
would keep her arms in training. Even since I recollect, the work done by
ladies in country houses was something astonishing, ladies by right of
well-to-do parents, by right of education and manners. Really, it seems
that there is no work a woman cannot do with the best results for
herself, always provided that it does not throw a strain upon the loins.
Healthy children sprung from such parents, while continuing the general
type, usually tend towards a refinement of the features. Under such
natural and healthy conditions, if the mother have a good shape, the
daughter is finer; if the father be of good height, the son is taller.
These children in their turn go through the same open-air training. In
course of years, the family guineas increasing, home comforts increase,
and manners are polished. Another generation sees the cast of countenance
smoothed of its original ruggedness, while preserving its good
proportion. The hard chin becomes rounded and not too prominent, the
cheek-bones sink, the ears are smaller, a softness spreads itself over
the whole face. That which was only honest now grows tender. Again
another generation, and it is a settled axiom that the family are
handsome. The country-side, as it gossips, agrees that the family are
marked out as good-looking. Like seeks like, as we know; the handsome
intermarry with the handsome. Still, the beauty has not arrived yet, nor
is it possible to tell whether she will appear from the female or male
branches. But in the fifth generation appear she does, with the original
features so moulded and softened by time, so worked and refined and
sweetened, so delicate and yet so rich in blood, that she seems like a
new creation that has suddenly started into being. No one has watched and
recorded the slow process which has thus finally resulted. No one could
do so, because it has spread over a century and a half. If any one will
consider, they will agree that the sentiment at the sight of a perfect
beauty is as much amazement as admiration. It is so astounding, so
outside ordinary experience, that it wears the aspect of magic.

A stationary home preserves the family intact, so that the influences
already described have time to produce their effect. There is nothing
uncommon in a yeoman's family continuing a hundred and fifty years in the
same homestead. Instances are known of such occupation extending for over
two hundred years; cases of three hundred years may be found: now and
then one is known to exceed that, and there is said to be one that has
not moved for six hundred. Granting the stock in its origin to have been
fairly well proportioned, and to have been subject for such a lapse of
time to favourable conditions, the rise of beauty becomes intelligible.

Cities labour under every disadvantage. First, families have no
stationary home, but constantly move, so that it is rare to find one
occupying a house fifty years, and will probably become much rarer in the
future. Secondly, the absence of fresh air, and that volatile essence, as
it were, of woods, and fields, and hills, which can be felt but not
fixed. Thirdly, the sedentary employment. Let a family be never so
robust, these must ultimately affect the constitution. If beauty appears
it is too often of the unhealthy order; there is no physique, no vigour,
no richness of blood. Beauty of the highest order is inseparable from
health; it is the outcome of health--centuries of health--and a really
beautiful woman is, in proportion, stronger than a man. It is astonishing
with what persistence a type of beauty once established in the country
will struggle to perpetuate itself against all the drawbacks of town life
after the family has removed thither.

When such results are produced under favourable conditions at the
yeoman's homestead, no difficulty arises in explaining why loveliness so
frequently appears in the houses of landed proprietors. Entailed estates
fix the family in one spot, and tend, by inter-marriage, to deepen any
original physical excellence. Constant out-of-door exercise, riding,
hunting, shooting, takes the place of manual labour. All the refinements
that money can purchase, travel, education, are here at work. That the
culture of the mind can alter the expression of the individual is
certain; if continued for many generations, possibly it may leave its
mark upon the actual bodily frame. Selection exerts a most powerful
influence in these cases. The rich and titled have so wide a range to
choose from. Consider these things working through centuries, perhaps in
a more or less direct manner, since the Norman Conquest. The fame of some
such families for handsome features and well-proportioned frames is
widely spread, so much so that a descendant not handsome is hardly
regarded by the outside world as legitimate. But even with all these
advantages beauty in the fullest sense does not appear regularly. Few
indeed are those families that can boast of more than one. It is the best
of all boasts; it is almost as if the Immortals had especially favoured
their house. Beauty has no period; it comes at intervals, unexpected! it
cannot be fixed. No wonder the earth is at its feet.

The fisherman's daughter ere now has reached very high in the scale of
beauty. Hardihood is the fisherman's talent by which he wins his living
from the sea. Tribal in his ways, his settlements are almost exclusive,
and his descent pure. The wind washed by the sea enriches his blood, and
of labour he has enough. Here are the same constant factors; the
stationary home keeping the family intact, the out-door life, the air,
the sea, the sun. Refinement is absent, but these alone are so powerful
that now and then beauty appears. The lovely Irish girls, again: their
forefathers have dwelt on the mountainside since the days of Fingal, and
all the hardships of their lot cannot destroy the natural tendency to
shape and enchanting feature. Without those constant factors beauty
cannot be, but yet they will not alone produce it. There must be
something in the blood which these influences gradually ripen. If it is
not there centuries are in vain; but if it is there then it needs these
conditions. Erratic, meteor-like beauty! for how many thousand years has
man been your slave! Let me repeat, the sentiment at the sight of a
perfect beauty is as much amazement as admiration. It so draws the heart
out of itself as to seem like magic.

She walks, and the very earth smiles beneath her feet. Something comes
with her that is more than mortal; witness the yearning welcome that
stretches towards her from all. As the sunshine lights up the aspect of
things, so her presence sweetens the very flowers like dew. But the
yearning welcome is, I think, the most remarkable of the evidence that
may be accumulated about it. So deep, so earnest, so forgetful of the
rest the passion of beauty is almost sad in its intense abstraction. It
is a passion, this yearning. She walks in the glory of young life; she is
really centuries old.

A hundred and fifty years at the least--more probably twice that--have
passed away, while from all enchanted things of earth and air this
preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century
and a half ago over the green wheat. From the perfume of the growing
grasses waving over honey-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the
greenfinches, baffling the bee. From rose-loved hedges, woodbine, and
cornflower azure-blue, where yellowing wheat-stalks crowd up under the
shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklet's sweetness where the iris
stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold the beauty; all the broad
hill's thyme and freedom: thrice a hundred years repeated. A hundred
years of cowslips, blue-bells, violets; purple spring and golden autumn;
sunshine, shower, and dewy mornings; the night immortal; all the rhythm
of Time unrolling. A chronicle unwritten and past all power of writing:
who shall preserve a record of the petals that fell from the roses a
century ago? The swallows to the housetops three hundred times--think a
moment of that. Thence she sprang, and the world yearns towards her
beauty as to flowers that are past. The loveliness of seventeen is
centuries old. Is this why passion is almost sad?


II--THE FORCE OF FORM

Her shoulders were broad, but not too broad--just enough to accentuate
the waist, and to give a pleasant sense of ease and power. She was
strong, upright, self-reliant, finished in herself. Her bust was full,
but not too prominent--more after nature than the dressmaker. There was
something, though, of the corset-maker in her waist, it appeared
naturally fine, and had been assisted to be finer. But it was in the hips
that the woman was perfect:--fulness without coarseness; large but not
big: in a word, nobly proportioned. Now imagine a black dress adhering to
this form. From the shoulders to the ankles it fitted "like a glove."
There was not a wrinkle, a fold, a crease, smooth as if cast in a mould,
and yet so managed that she moved without effort. Every undulation of her
figure, as she stepped lightly forward flowed to the surface. The slight
sway of the hip as the foot was lifted, the upward and _inward_ movement
of the limb as the knee was raised, the straightening as the instep felt
her weight, each change as the limb described the curves of walking was
repeated in her dress. At every change of position she was as gracefully
draped as before. All was revealed, yet all concealed. As she passed
there was the sense of a presence--the presence of perfect form. She was
lifted as she moved above the ground by the curves of beauty as rapid
revolution in a curve suspends the down-dragging of gravity. A force went
by--the force of animated perfect form.

Merely as an animal, how grand and beautiful is a perfect woman! Simply
as a living, breathing creature, can anything imaginable come near her?

There is such strength in shape--such force in form. Without muscular
development shape conveys the impression of the greatest of all
strength--that is, of completeness in itself. The ancient philosophy
regarded a globe as the most perfect of all bodies, because it was the
same--that is, it was perfect and complete in itself--from whatever point
it was contemplated. Such is woman's form when nature's intent is
fulfilled in beauty, and that beauty gives the idea of self-contained
power.

A full-grown woman is, too, physically stronger than a man. Her physique
excels man's. Look at her torso, at the size, the fulness, the rounded
firmness, the depth of the chest. There is a nobleness about it.
Shoulders, arms, limbs, all reach a breadth of make seldom seen in man.
There is more than merely sufficient--there is a luxuriance indicating a
surpassing vigour. And this occurs without effort. She needs no long
manual labour, no exhaustive gymnastic exercise, nor any special care in
food or training. It is difficult not to envy the superb physique and
beautiful carriage of some women. They are so strong without effort.


III--AN ARM

A large white arm, bare, in the sunshine, to the shoulder, carelessly
leant against a low red wall, lingers in my memory. There was a house
roofed with old grey stone slates in the background, and peaches trained
up by the window. The low garden wall of red brick--ancient red brick,
not the pale, dusty blocks of these days--was streaked with dry mosses
hiding the mortar. Clear and brilliant, the gaudy sun of morning shone
down upon her as she stood in the gateway, resting her arm on the red
wall, and pressing on the mosses which the heat had dried. Her face I do
not remember, only the arm. She had come out from dairy work, which needs
bare arms, and stood facing the bold sun. It was very large--some might
have called it immense--and yet natural and justly proportioned to the
woman, her work, and her physique. So immense an arm was like a
revelation of the vast physical proportions which our race is capable of
attaining under favourable conditions. Perfectly white--white as the milk
in which it was often plunged--smooth and pleasant in the texture of the
skin, it was entirely removed from coarseness. The might of its size was
chiefly by the shoulder; the wrist was not large, nor the hand. Colossal,
white, sunlit, bare--among the trees and the meads around it was a living
embodiment of the limbs we attribute to the first dwellers on earth.


IV--LIPS

The mouth is the centre of woman's beauty. To the lips the glance is
attracted the moment she approaches, and their shape remains in the
memory longest. Curve, colour, and substance are the three essentials of
the lips, but these are nothing without mobility, the soul of the mouth.
If neither sculpture, nor the palette with its varied resources, can
convey the spell of perfect lips, how can it be done in black letters of
ink only? Nothing is so difficult, nothing so beautiful. There are lips
which have an elongated curve (of the upper one), ending with a slight
curl, like a ringlet at the end of a tress, like those tiny wavelets on a
level sand which float in before the tide, or like a frond of fern
unrolling. In this curl there lurks a smile, so that she can scarcely
open her mouth without a laugh, or the look of one. These upper lips are
drawn with parallel lines, the verge is defined by two lines near
together, enclosing the narrowest space possible, which is ever so
faintly less coloured than the substance of the lip. This makes the mouth
appear larger than it really is; the bow, too, is more flattened than in
the pure Greek lip. It is beautiful, but not perfect, tempting,
mischievous, not retiring, and belongs to a woman who is never long
alone. To describe it first is natural, because this mouth is itself the
face, and the rest of the features are grouped to it. If you think of her
you think of her mouth only--the face appears as memory acts, but the
mouth is distinct, the remainder uncertain. She laughs and the curl runs
upwards, so that you must laugh too, you cannot help it. Had the curl
gone downwards, as with habitually melancholy people, you might have
withstood her smile. The room is never dull where she is, for there is a
distinct character in it--a woman--and not a mere living creature, and it
is noticeable that if there are five or six or more present, somehow the
conversation centres round her.

There was a lady I knew who had lips like these. Of the kind they were
perfect. Though she was barely fourteen she was _the_ woman of that
circle by the magnetism of her mouth. When we all met together in the
evening all that went on in some way or other centred about her. By
consent the choice of what game should be played was left to her to
decide. She was asked if it was not time for some one to sing, and the
very mistress of the household referred to her whether we should have
another round or go in to supper. Of course, she always decided as she
supposed the hostess wished. At supper, if there was a delicacy on the
table it was invariably offered to her. The eagerness of the elderly
gentlemen, who presumed on their grey locks and conventional harmlessness
to press their attentions upon her, showed who was the most attractive
person in the room. Younger men feel a certain reserve, and do not reveal
their inclinations before a crowd, but the harmless old gentleman makes
no secret of his admiration. She managed them all, old and young, with
unconscious tact, and never left the ranks of the other ladies as a crude
flirt would have done. This tact and way of modestly holding back when so
many would have pushed her too much to the front retained for her the
good word of her own sex. If a dance was proposed it was left to her to
say yes or no, and if it was not too late the answer was usually in the
affirmative. So in the morning, should we make an excursion to some view
or pleasant wood, all eyes rested upon her, and if she thought it fine
enough away we went.

Her features were rather fine, but not especially so; her complexion a
little dusky, eyes grey, and dark hair; her figure moderately tall,
slender but shapely. She was always dressed well; a certain taste marked
her in everything. Upon introduction no one would have thought anything
of her; they would have said, "insignificant--plain;" in half an hour,
"different to most girls;" in an hour, "extremely pleasant;" in a day, "a
singularly attractive girl;" and so on, till her empire was established.
It was not the features--it was the mouth, the curling lips, the vivacity
and life that sparkled in them. There is wine, deep-coloured, strong, but
smooth at the surface. There is champagne with its richness continually
rushing to the rim. Her lips flowed with champagne. It requires a clever
man indeed to judge of men; now how could so young and inexperienced a
creature distinguish the best from so many suitors?



OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY


The cawing of the rooks in February shows that the time is coming when
their nests will be re-occupied. They resort to the trees, and perch
above the old nests to indicate their rights; for in the rookery
possession is the law, and not nine-tenths of it only. In the slow dull
cold of winter even these noisy birds are quiet, and as the vast flocks
pass over, night and morning, to and from the woods in which they roost,
there is scarcely a sound. Through the mist their black wings advance in
silence, the jackdaws with them are chilled into unwonted quiet, and
unless you chance to look up the crowd may go over unnoticed. But so soon
as the waters begin to make a sound in February, running in the ditches
and splashing over stones, the rooks commence the speeches and
conversations which will continue till late into the following autumn.

The general idea is that they pair in February, but there are some
reasons for thinking that the rooks, in fact, choose their males at the
end of the preceding summer. They are then in large flocks, and if only
casually glanced at appear mixed together without any order or
arrangement. They move on the ground and fly in the air so close, one
beside the other, that at the first glance or so you cannot distinguish
them apart. Yet if you should be lingering along the by-ways of the
fields as the acorns fall, and the leaves come rustling down in the warm
sunny autumn afternoons, and keep an observant eye upon the rooks in the
trees, or on the fresh-turned furrows, they will be seen to act in
couples. On the ground couples alight near each other, on the trees they
perch near each other, and in the air fly side by side. Like soldiers
each has his comrade. Wedged in the ranks every man looks like his
fellow, and there seems no tie between them but a common discipline.
Intimate acquaintance with barrack or camp life would show that every one
had his friend. There is also the mess, or companionship of half a dozen,
or dozen, or more, and something like this exists part of the year in the
armies of the rooks. After the nest time is over they flock together, and
each family of three or four flies in concert. Later on they apparently
choose their own particular friends, that is the young birds do so. All
through the winter after, say October, these pairs keep together, though
lost in the general mass to the passing spectator. If you alarm them
while feeding on the ground in winter, supposing you have not got a gun,
they merely rise up to the nearest tree, and it may then be observed that
they do this in pairs. One perches on a branch and a second comes to him.
When February arrives, and they resort to the nests to look after or
seize on the property there, they are in fact already paired, though the
almanacs put down St. Valentine's day as the date of courtship.

There is very often a warm interval in February, sometimes a few days
earlier and sometimes later, but as a rule it happens that a week or so
of mild sunny weather occurs about this time. Released from the grip of
the frost, the streams trickle forth from the fields and pour into the
ditches, so that while walking along the footpath there is a murmur all
around coming from the rush of water. The murmur of the poets is indeed
louder in February than in the more pleasant days of summer, for then the
growth of aquatic grasses checks the flow and stills it, whilst in
February every stone, or flint, or lump of chalk divides the current and
causes a vibration, With this murmur of water, and mild time, the rooks
caw incessantly, and the birds at large essay to utter their welcome of
the sun. The wet furrows reflect the rays so that the dark earth gleams,
and in the slight mist that stays farther away the light pauses and fills
the vapour with radiance. Through this luminous mist the larks race after
each other twittering, and as they turn aside, swerving in their swift
flight, their white breasts appear for a moment. As while standing by a
pool the fishes came into sight, emerging as they swim round from the
shadow of the deeper water, so the larks dart over the low edge, and
through the mist, and pass before you, and are gone again. All at once
one checks his pursuit, forgets the immediate object, and rises, singing
as he soars. The notes fall from the air over the dark wet earth, over
the dank grass, and broken withered fern of the hedge, and listening to
them it seems for a moment spring. There is sunshine in the song; the
lark and the light are one. He gives us a few minutes of summer in
February days. In May he rises before as yet the dawn is come, and the
sunrise flows down to us under through his notes. On his breast, high
above the earth, the first rays fall as the rim of the sun edges up at
the eastward hill. The lark and the light are as one, and wherever he
glides over the wet furrows the glint of the sun goes with him. Anon
alighting he runs between the lines of the green corn. In hot summer,
when the open hillside is burned with bright light, the larks are then
singing and soaring. Stepping up the hill laboriously, suddenly a lark
starts into the light and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead.
With bright light, and sunshine, and sunrise, and blue skies the bird is
so associated in the mind, that even to see him in the frosty days of
wjnter, at least assures us that summer will certainly return.

Ought not winter, in allegorical designs, the rather to be represented
with such things that might suggest hope than such as convey a cold and
grim despair? The withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging bill that
cuts and destroys, why these? Why not rather the dear larks for one? They
fly in flocks, and amid the white expanse of snow (in the south) their
pleasant twitter or call is heard as they sweep along seeking some grassy
spot cleared by the wind. The lark, the bird of the light, is there in
the bitter short days. Put the lark then for winter, a sign of hope, a
certainty of summer. Put, too, the sheathed bud, for if you search the
hedge you will find the buds there, on tree and bush, carefully wrapped
around with the case which protects them as a cloak. Put, too, the sharp
needles of the green corn; let the wind clear it of snow a little way,
and show that under cold clod and colder snow the green thing pushes up,
knowing that summer must come. Nothing despairs but man. Set the sharp
curve of the white new moon in the sky: she is white in true frost, and
yellow a little if it is devising change. Set the new moon as something
that symbols an increase. Set the shepherd's crook in a corner as a token
that the flocks are already enlarged in number. The shepherd is the
symbolic man of the hardest winter time. His work is never more important
than then. Those that only roam the fields when they are pleasant in May,
see the lambs at play in the meadow, and naturally think of lambs and May
flowers. But the lamb was born in the adversity of snow. Or you might set
the morning star, for it burns and burns and glitters in the winter dawn,
and throws forth beams like those of metal consumed in oxygen. There is
nought that I know by comparison with which I might indicate the glory of
the morning star, while yet the dark night hides in the hollows. The lamb
is born in the fold. The morning star glitters in the sky. The bud is
alive in its sheath; the green corn under the snow; the lark twitters as
he passes. Now these to me are the allegory of winter.

These mild hours in February check the hold which winter has been
gaining, and as it were, tear his claws out of the earth, their prey. If
it has not been so bitter previously, when this Gulf stream or current of
warmer air enters the expanse it may bring forth a butterfly and tenderly
woo the first violet into flower. But this depends on its having been
only moderately cold before, and also upon the stratum, whether it is
backward clay, or forward gravel and sand. Spring dates are quite
different according to the locality, and when violets may be found in one
district, in another there is hardly a woodbine-leaf out. The border line
may be traced, and is occasionally so narrow, one may cross over it
almost at a step. It would sometimes seem as if even the nut-tree bushes
bore larger and finer nuts on the warmer soil, and that they ripened
quicker. Any curious in the first of things, whether it be a leaf, or
flower, or a bird, should bear this in mind, and not be discouraged
because he hears some one else has already discovered or heard something.

A little note taken now at this bare time of the kind of earth may lead
to an understanding of the district. It is plain where the plough has
turned it, where the rabbits have burrowed and thrown it out, where a
tree has been felled by the gales, by the brook where the bank is worn
away, or by the sediment at the shallow places. Before the grass and
weeds, and corn and flowers have hidden it, the character of the soil is
evident at these natural sections without the aid of a spade. Going
slowly along the footpath--indeed you cannot go fast in moist
February--it is a good time to select the places and map them out where
herbs and flowers will most likely come first. All the autumn lies prone
on the ground. Dead dark leaves, some washed to their woody frames, short
grey stalks, some few decayed hulls of hedge fruit, and among these the
mars or stocks of the plants that do not die away, but lie as it were on
the surface waiting. Here the strong teazle will presently stand high;
here the ground-ivy will dot the mound with bluish-purple. But it will be
necessary to walk slowly to find the ground-ivy flowers under the cover
of the briers. These bushes will be a likely place for a blackbird's
nest; this thick close hawthorn for a bullfinch; these bramble thickets
with remnants of old nettle stalks will be frequented by the whitethroat
after a while. The hedge is now but a lattice-work which will before long
be hung with green. Now it can be seen through, and now is the time to
arrange for future discovery. In May everything will be hidden, and
unless the most promising places are selected beforehand, it will not be
easy to search them out. The broad ditch will be arched over, the plants
rising on the mound will meet the green boughs drooping, and all the
vacancy will be filled. But having observed the spot in winter you can
almost make certain of success in spring.

It is this previous knowledge which invests those who are always on the
spot, those who work much in the fields or have the care of woods, with
their apparent prescience. They lead the new comer to a hedge, or the
corner of a copse, or a bend of the brook, announcing beforehand that
they feel assured something will be found there; and so it is. This, too,
is one reason why a fixed observer usually sees more than one who rambles
a great deal and covers ten times the space. The fixed observer who
hardly goes a mile from home is like the man who sits still by the edge
of a crowd, and by-and-by his lost companion returns to him. To walk
about in search of persons in a crowd is well known to be the worst way
of recovering them. Sit still and they will often come by. In a far more
certain manner this is the case with birds and animals. They all come
back. During a twelvemonth probably every creature would pass over a
given locality: every creature that is not confined to certain places.
The whole army of the woods and hedges marches across a single farm in
twelve months. A single tree--especially an old tree--is visited by
four-fifths of the birds that ever perch in the course of that period.
Every year, too, brings something fresh, and adds new visitors to the
list. Even the wild sea birds are found inland, and some that scarce seem
able to fly at all are cast far ashore by the gales. It is difficult to
believe that one would not see more by extending the journey, but, in
fact, experience proves that the longer a single locality is studied the
more is found in it. But you should know the places in winter as well as
in tempting summer, when song and shade and colour attract every one to
the field. You should face the mire and slippery path. Nature yields
nothing to the sybarite. The meadow glows with buttercups in spring, the
hedges are green, the woods lovely; but these are not to be enjoyed in
their full significance unless you have traversed the same places when
bare, and have watched the slow fulfilment of the flowers.

The moist leaves that remain upon the mounds do not rustle, and the
thrush moves among them unheard. The sunshine may bring out a rabbit,
feeding along the slope of the mound, following the paths or runs. He
picks his way, he does not like wet. Though out at night in the dewy
grass of summer, in the rain-soaked grass of winter, and living all his
life in the earth, often damp nearly to his burrows, no time, and no
succession of generations can make him like wet. He endures it, but he
picks his way round the dead fern and the decayed leaves. He sits in the
bunches of long grass, but he does not like the drops of dew on it to
touch him. Water lays his fur close, and mats it, instead of running off
and leaving him sleek. As he hops a little way at a time on the mound he
chooses his route almost as we pick ours in the mud and pools of
February. By the shore of the ditch there still stand a few dry, dead
dock stems, with some dry reddish-brown seed adhering. Some dry brown
nettle stalks remain; some grey and broken thistles; some teazles leaning
on the bushes. The power of winter has reached its utmost now, and can go
no farther. These bines which still hang in the bushes are those of the
greater bindweed, and will be used in a month or so by many birds as
conveniently curved to fit about their nests. The stem of wild clematis,
grey and bowed, could scarcely look more dead. Fibres are peeling from
it, they come off at the touch of the fingers. The few brown feathers
that perhaps still adhere where the flowers once were are stained and
discoloured by the beating of the rain. It is not dead: it will flourish
again ere long. It is the sturdiest of creepers, facing the ferocious
winds of the hills, the tremendous rains that blow up from the sea, and
bitter frost, if only it can get its roots into soil that suits it. In
some places it takes the place of the hedge proper and becomes itself the
hedge. Many of the trunks of the elms are swathed in minute green
vegetation which has flourished in the winter, as the clematis will in in
the summer. Of all, the brambles bear the wild works of winter best.
Given only a little shelter, in the corner of the hedges or under trees
and copses they retain green leaves till the buds burst again. The frosts
tint them in autumn with crimson, but not all turn colour or fall. The
brambles are the bowers of the birds; in these still leafy bowers they do
the courting of the spring, and under the brambles the earliest arum, and
cleaver, or avens, push up. Round about them the first white nettle
flowers, not long now; latest too, in the autumn. The white nettle
sometimes blooms so soon (always according to locality), and again so
late, that there seems but a brief interval between, as if it flowered
nearly all the year round. So the berries on the holly if let alone often
stay till summer is in, and new berries begin to appear shortly
afterwards. The ivy, too, bears its berries far into the summer. Perhaps
if the country be taken at large there is never a time when there is not
a flower of some kind out, in this or that warm southern nook. The sun
never sets, nor do the flowers ever die. There is life always, even in
the dry fir-cone that looks so brown and sapless.

The path crosses the uplands where the lapwings stand on the parallel
ridges of the ploughed field like a drilled company; if they rise they
wheel as one, and in the twilight move across the fields in bands
invisible as they sweep near the ground, but seen against the sky in
rising over the trees and the hedges. There is a plantation of fir and
ash on the slope, and a narrow waggon-way enters it, and seems to lose
itself in the wood. Always approach this spot quietly, for whatever is in
the wood is sure at some time or other to come to the open space of the
track. Wood-pigeons, pheasants, squirrels, magpies, hares, everything
feathered or furred, down to the mole, is sure to seek the open way.
Butterflies flutter through the copse by it in summer, just as you or I
might use the passage between the trees. Towards the evening the
partridges may run through to join their friends before roost-time on the
ground. Or you may see a covey there now and then, creeping slowly with
humped backs, and at a distance not unlike hedgehogs in their motions.
The spot therefore should be approached with care; if it is only a thrush
out it is a pleasure to see him at his ease and, as he deems, unobserved.
If a bird or animal thinks itself noticed it seldom does much, some will
cease singing immediately they are looked at. The day is perceptibly
longer already. As the sun goes down, the western sky often takes a
lovely green tint in this month, and one stays to look at it, forgetting
the dark and miry way homewards. I think the moments when we forget the
mire of the world are the most precious. After a while the green corn
rises higher out of the rude earth.

Pure colour almost always gives the idea of fire, or rather it is perhaps
as if a light shone through as well as colour itself. The fresh green
blade of corn is like this, so pellucid, so clear and pure in its green
as to seem to shine with colour. It is not brilliant--not a surface gleam
or an enamel,--it is stained through. Beside the moist clods the slender
flags arise filled with the sweetness of the earth. Out of the darkness
under--that darkness which knows no day save when the ploughshare opens
its chinks--they have come to the light. To the light they have brought a
colour which will attract the sunbeams from now till harvest. They fall
more pleasantly on the corn, toned, as if they mingled with it. Seldom do
we realise that the world is practically no thicker to us than the print
of our footsteps on the path. Upon that surface we walk and act our
comedy of life, and what is beneath is nothing to us. But it is out from
that under-world, from the dead and the unknown, from the cold moist
ground, that these green blades have sprung. Yonder a steam-plough pants
up the hill, groaning with its own strength, yet all that strength and
might of wheels, and piston, and chains, cannot drag from the earth one
single blade like these. Force cannot make it; it must grow--an easy word
to speak or write, in fact full of potency. It is this mystery of growth
and life, of beauty, and sweetness, and colour, starting forth from the
clods that gives the corn its power over me. Somehow I identify myself
with it; I live again as I see it. Year by year it is the same, and when
I see it I feel that I have once more entered on a new life. And I think
the spring, with its green corn, its violets, and hawthorn-leaves, and
increasing song, grows yearly dearer and more dear to this our ancient
earth. So many centuries have flown! Now it is the manner with all
natural things to gather as it were by smallest particles. The merest
grain of sand drifts unseen into a crevice, and by-and-by another; after
a while there is a heap; a century and it is a mound, and then every one
observes and comments on it. Time itself has gone on like this; the years
have accumulated, first in drifts, then in heaps, and now a vast mound,
to which the mountains are knolls, rises up and overshadows us. Time lies
heavy on the world. The old, old earth is glad to turn from the cark and
care of drifted centuries to the first sweet blades of green.

There is sunshine to-day after rain, and every lark is singing. Across
the vale a broad cloud-shadow descends the hillside, is lost in the
hollow, and presently, without warning, slips over the edge, coming
swiftly along the green tips. The sunshine follows--the warmer for its
momentary absence. Far, far down in a grassy coomb stands a solitary
cornrick, conical roofed, casting a lonely shadow--marked because so
solitary, and beyond it on the rising slope is a brown copse. The
leafless branches take a brown tint in the sunlight; on the summit above
there is furze; then more hill lines drawn against the sky. In the tops
of the dark pines at the corner of the copse, could the glance sustain
itself to see them, there are finches warming themselves in the sunbeams.
The thick needles shelter them, from the current of air, and the sky is
bluer above the pines. Their hearts are full already of the happy days to
come, when the moss yonder by the beech, and the lichen on the fir-trunk,
and the loose fibres caught in the fork of an unbending bough, shall
furnish forth a sufficient mansion for their young. Another broad
cloud-shadow, and another warm embrace of sunlight. All the serried ranks
of the green corn bow at the word of command as the wind rushes over
them.

There is largeness and freedom here. Broad as the down and free as the
wind, the thought can roam high over the narrow roofs in the vale. Nature
has affixed no bounds to thought. All the palings, and walls, and crooked
fences deep down yonder are artificial. The fetters and traditions, the
routine, the dull roundabout which deadens the spirit like the cold moist
earth, are the merest nothings. Here it is easy with the physical eye to
look over the highest roof. The moment the eye of the mind is filled with
the beauty of things natural an equal freedom and width of view come to
it. Step aside from the trodden footpath of personal experience, throwing
away the petty cynicism born of petty hopes disappointed. Step out upon
the broad down beside the green corn, and let its freshness become part
of life.

The wind passes, and it bends--let the wind, too, pass over the spirit.
From the cloud-shadow it emerges to the sunshine--let the heart come out
from the shadow of roofs to the open glow of the sky. High above, the
songs of the larks fall as rain--receive it with open hands. Pure is the
colour of the green flags, the slender-pointed blades--let the thought be
pure as the light that shines through that colour. Broad are the downs
and open the aspect--gather the breadth and largeness of view. Never can
that view be wide enough and large enough, there will always be room to
aim higher. As the air of the hills enriches the blood, so let the
presence of these beautiful things enrich the inner sense. One memory of
the green corn, fresh beneath the sun and wind, will lift up the heart
from the clods.



HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING


I--WINTER

Coming like a white wall the rain reaches me, and in an instant
everything is gone from sight that is more than ten yards distant. The
narrow upland road is beaten to a darker hue, and two runnels of water
rush along at the sides, where, when the chalk-laden streamlets dry, blue
splinters of flint will be exposed in the channels. For a moment the air
seems driven away by the sudden pressure, and I catch my breath and stand
still with one shoulder forward to receive the blow. Hiss, the land
shudders under the cold onslaught; hiss, and on the blast goes, and the
sound with it, for the very fury of the rain, after the first second,
drowns its own noise. There is not a single creature visible, the low and
stunted hedgerows, bare of leaf, could conceal nothing; the rain passes
straight through to the ground. Crooked and gnarled, the bushes are
locked together as if in no other way could they hold themselves against
the gales. Such little grass as there is on the mounds is thin and short,
and could not hide a mouse. There is no finch, sparrow, thrush,
blackbird. As the wave of rain passes over and leaves a hollow between
the waters, that which has gone and that to come, the ploughed lands on
either side are seen to be equally bare. In furrows full of water, a hare
would not sit, nor partridge run; the larks, the patient larks which
endure almost everything, even they have gone. Furrow on furrow with
flints dotted on their slopes, and chalk lumps, that is all. The cold
earth gives no sweet petal of flower, nor can any bud of thought or bloom
of imagination start forth in the mind. But step by step, forcing a way
through the rain and over the ridge, I find a small and stunted copse
down in the next hollow. It is rather a wide hedge than a copse, and
stands by the road in the corner of a field. The boughs are bare; still
they break the storm, and it is a relief to wait a while there and rest.
After a minute or so the eye gets accustomed to the branches and finds a
line of sight through the narrow end of the copse. Within twenty
yards--just outside the copse--there are a number of lapwings, dispersed
about the furrows. One runs a few feet forward and picks something from
the ground; another runs in the same manner to one side; a third rushes
in still a third direction. Their crests, their green-tinted wings, and
white breasts are not disarranged by the torrent. Something in the style
of the birds recalls the wagtail, though they are so much larger. Beyond
these are half a dozen more, and in a straggling line others extend out
into the field. They have found some slight shelter here from the
sweeping of the rain and wind, and are not obliged to face it as in the
open. Minutely searching every clod they gather their food in
imperceptible items from the surface.

Sodden leaves lie in the furrows along the side of the copse; broken and
decaying burdocks still uphold their jagged stems, but will be soaked
away by degrees; dank grasses droop outwards! the red seed of a dock is
all that remains of the berries and fruit, the seeds and grain of autumn.
Like the hedge, the copse is vacant. Nothing moves within, watch as
carefully as I may. The boughs are blackened by wet and would touch cold.
From the grasses to the branches there is nothing any one would like to
handle, and I stand apart even from the bush that keeps away the rain.
The green plovers are the only things of life that save the earth from
utter loneliness. Heavily as the rain may fall, cold as the saturated
wind may blow, the plovers remind us of the beauty of shape, colour, and
animation. They seem too slender to withstand the blast--they should have
gone with the swallows--too delicate for these rude hours; yet they alone
face them.

Once more the wave of rain has passed, and yonder the hills appear; these
are but uplands. The nearest and highest has a green rampart, visible for
a moment against the dark sky, and then again wrapped in a toga of misty
cloud. So the chilled Roman drew his toga around him in ancient days as
from that spot he looked wistfully southwards and thought of Italy.
Wee-ah-wee! Some chance movement has been noticed by the nearest bird,
and away they go at once as if with the same wings, sweeping overhead,
then to the right, then to the left, and then back again, till at last
lost in the coming shower. After they have thus vibrated to and fro long
enough, like a pendulum coming to rest, they will alight in the open
field on the ridge behind. There in drilled ranks, well closed together,
all facing the same way, they will stand for hours. Let us go also and
let the shower conceal them. Another time my path leads over the hills.

It is afternoon, which in winter is evening. The sward of the down is dry
under foot, but hard, and does not lift the instep with the springy feel
of summer. The sky is gone, it is not clouded, it is swathed in gloom.
Upwards the still air thickens, and there is no arch or vault of heaven.
Formless and vague, it seems some vast shadow descending. The sun has
disappeared, and the light there still is, is left in the atmosphere
enclosed by the gloomy mist as pools are left by a receding tide. Through
the sand the water slips, and through the mist the light glides away.
Nearer comes the formless shadow and the visible earth grows smaller. The
path has faded, and there are no means on the open downs of knowing
whether the direction pursued is right or wrong, till a boulder (which is
a landmark) is perceived. Thence the way is down the slope, the last and
limit of the hills there. It is a rough descent, the paths worn by sheep
may at any moment cause a stumble. At the foot is a waggon-track beside a
low hedge, enclosing the first arable field. The hedge is a guide, but
the ruts are deep, and it still needs slow and careful walking.
Wee-ah-wee! Up from the dusky surface of the arable field springs a
plover, and the notes are immediately repeated by another. They can just
be seen as darker bodies against the shadow as they fly overhead.
Wee-ah-wee! The sound grows fainter as they fetch a longer circle in the
gloom.

There is another winter resort of plovers in the valley where a barren
waste was ploughed some years ago. A few furze bushes still stand in the
hedges about it, and the corners are full of rushes. Not all the grubbing
of furze and bushes, the deep ploughing and draining, has succeeded in
rendering the place fertile like the adjacent fields. The character of a
marsh adheres to it still. So long as there is a crop, the lapwings keep
away, but as soon as the ploughs turn up the ground in autumn they
return. The place lies low, and level with the waters in the ponds and
streamlets. A mist hangs about it in the evening, and even when there is
none, there is a distinct difference in the atmosphere while passing it.
From their hereditary home the lapwings cannot be entirely driven away.
Out of the mist comes their plaintive cry; they are hidden, and their
exact locality is not to be discovered. Where winter rules most
ruthlessly, where darkness is deepest in daylight, there the slender
plovers stay undaunted.


II--SPRING

A soft sound of water moving among thousands of grass-blades--to the
hearing it is as the sweetness of spring air to the scent. It is so faint
and so diffused that the exact spot whence it issues cannot be discerned,
yet it is distinct, and my footsteps are slower as I listen. Yonder, in
the corners of the mead, the atmosphere is full of some ethereal vapour.
The sunshine stays in the air there, as if the green hedges held the wind
from brushing it away. Low and plaintive come the notes of a lapwing; the
same notes, but tender with love.

On this side, by the hedge, the ground is a little higher and dry, hung
over with the lengthy boughs of an oak, which give some shade. I always
feel a sense of regret when I see a seedling oak in the grass. The two
green leaves--the little stem so upright and confident, and, though but a
few inches high, already so completely a tree--are in themselves
beautiful. Power, endurance, grandeur are there; you can grasp all with
your hand, and take a ship between the finger and thumb. Time, that
sweeps away everything, is for a while repelled; the oak will grow when
the time we know is forgotten, and when felled will be the mainstay and
safety of a generation in a future century. That the plant should start
among the grass, to be severed by the scythe or crushed by cattle, is
very pitiful; I cannot help wishing that it could be transplanted and
protected. Of the countless acorns that drop in autumn not one in a
million is permitted to become a tree--a vast waste of strength and
beauty. From the bushes by the stile on the left hand, which I have just
passed, follows the long whistle of a nightingale. His nest is near; he
sings night and day. Had I waited on the stile, in a few minutes,
becoming used to my presence, he would have made the hawthorn vibrate, so
powerful in his voice when heard close at hand. There is not another
nightingale along this path for at least a mile, though it crosses
meadows and runs by hedges to all appearance equally suitable; but
nightingales will not pass their limits; they seem to have a marked-out
range as strictly defined as the lines of a geological map. They will not
go over to the next hedge--hardly into the field on one side of a
favourite spot, nor a yard farther along the mound, Opposite the oak is a
low fence of serrated green. Just projecting above the edge of a brook,
fast-growing flags have thrust up their bayonet-tips. Beneath their
stalks are so thick in the shallow places that a pike can scarcely push a
way between them. Over the brook stand some high maple trees; to their
thick foliage wood-pigeons come. The entrance to a coomb, the widening
mouth of a valley, is beyond, with copses on the slopes.

Again the plover's notes; this time in the field immediately behind;
repeated, too, in the field on the right hand. One comes over, and as he
flies he jerks a wing upwards and partly turns on his side in the air,
rolling like a vessel in a swell. He seems to beat the air sideways, as
if against a wall, not downwards. This habit makes his course appear so
uncertain; he may go there, or yonder, or in a third direction, more
undecided than a startled snipe. Is there a little vanity in that wanton
flight? Is there a little consciousness of the spring-freshened colours
of his plumage, and pride in the dainty touch of his wings on the sweet
wind? His love is watching his wayward course. He prolongs it. He has but
a few yards to fly to reach the well-known feeding-ground by the brook
where the grass is short; perhaps it has been eaten off by sheep. It is a
straight and easy line as a starling would fly. The plover thinks nothing
of a straight line; he winds first with the course of the hedge, then
rises aslant, uttering his cry, wheels, and returns; now this way, direct
at me, as if his object was to display his snowy breast; suddenly rising
aslant again, he wheels once more, and goes right away from his object
over above the field whence he came. Another moment and he returns; and
so to and fro, and round and round, till with a sidelong, unexpected
sweep he alights by the brook. He stands a minute, then utters his cry,
and runs a yard or so forward. In a little while a second plover arrives
from the field behind. He too dances a maze in the air before he settles.
Soon a third joins them. They are visible at that spot because the grass
is short, elsewhere they would be hidden. If one of these rises and flies
to and fro almost instantly another follows, and then it is, indeed, a
dance before they alight. The wheeling, maze-tracing, devious windings
continue till the eye wearies and rests with pleasure on a passing
butterfly. These birds have nests in the meadows adjoining; they meet
here as a common feeding-ground. Presently they will disperse, each
returning to his mate at the nest. Half an hour afterwards they will meet
once more, either here or on the wing.

In this manner they spend their time from dawn through the flower-growing
day till dusk. When the sun arises over the hill into the sky already
blue the plovers have been up a long while. All the busy morning they go
to and fro--the busy morning, when the wood-pigeons cannot rest in the
copses on the coomb-side, but continually fly in and out; when the
blackbirds whistle in the oaks, when the bluebells gleam with purplish
lustre. At noontide, in the dry heat, it is pleasant to listen to the
sound of water moving among the thousand thousand grass-blades of the
mead. The flower-growing day lengthens out beyond the sunset, and till
the hedges are dim the lapwings do not cease.

Leaving now the shade of the oak, I follow the path into the meadow on
the right, stepping by the way over a streamlet, which diffuses its rapid
current broadcast over the sward till it collects again and pours into
the brook. This next meadow is somewhat more raised, and not watered; the
grass is high and full of buttercups. Before I have gone twenty yards a
lapwing rises out in the field, rushes towards me through the air, and
circles round my head, making as if to dash at me, and uttering shrill
cries. Immediately another comes from the mead behind the oak; then a
third from over the hedge, and all those that have been feeding by the
brook, till I am encircled with them. They wheel round, dive, rise
aslant, cry, and wheel again, always close over me, till I have walked
some distance, when, one by one, they fall off, and, still uttering
threats, retire. There is a nest in this meadow, and, although it is, no
doubt, a long way from the path, my presence even in the field, large as
it is, is resented. The couple who imagine their possessions threatened
are quickly joined by their friends, and there is no rest till I have
left their treasures far behind.



OUTSIDE LONDON


I

There was something dark on the grass under an elm in the field by the
barn. It rose and fell; and we saw that it was a wing--a single black
wing, striking the ground instead of the air; indeed, it seemed to come
out of the earth itself, the body of the bird being hidden by the grass.
This black wing flapped and flapped, but could not lift itself--a single
wing of course could not fly. A rook had dropped out of the elm and was
lying helpless at the foot of the tree--it is a favourite tree with
rooks; they build in it, and at that moment there were twenty or more
perched aloft, cawing and conversing comfortably, without the least
thought of their dying comrade. Not one of all the number descended to
see what was the matter, nor even fluttered half-way down. This elm is
their clubhouse, where they meet every afternoon as the sun gets low to
discuss the scandals of the day, before retiring to roost in the avenues
and tree-groups of the park adjacent. While we looked, a peacock came
round the corner of the barn; he had caught sight of the flapping wing,
and approached with long deliberate steps and outstretched neck. "Ee-aw!
Ee-aw! What's this? What's this?" he inquired in bird-language. "Ee-aw!
Ee-aw! My friends, see here!" Gravely, and step by step, he came nearer
and nearer, slowly, and not without some fear, till curiosity had brought
him within a yard. In a moment or two a peahen followed and also
stretched out her neck--the two long necks pointing at the black flapping
wing. A second peacock and peahen approached, and the four great birds
stretched out their necks towards the dying rook--a "crowner's quest"
upon the unfortunate creature.

If any one had been at hand to sketch it, the scene would have been very
grotesque, and not without a ludicrous sadness. There was the tall elm
tinted with yellow, the black rooks high above flying in and out, yellow
leaves twirling down, the blue peacocks with their crests, the red barn
behind, the golden sun afar shining low through the trees of the park,
the brown autumn sward, a grey horse, orange maple bushes. There was the
quiet tone of the coming evening--the early evening of October--such an
evening as the rook had seen many a time from the tops of the trees. A
man dies, and the crowd goes on passing under the window along the street
without a thought. The rook died, and his friends, who had that day been
with him in the oaks feasting on acorns, who had been with him in the
fresh-turned furrows, born perhaps in the same nest, utterly forgot him
before he was dead. With a great common caw--a common shout--they
suddenly left the tree in a bevy and flew towards the park. The peacocks
having brought in their verdict, departed, and the dead bird was left
alone.

In falling out of the elm, the rook had alighted partly on his side and
partly on his back, so that he could only flutter one wing, the other
being held down by his own weight. He had probably died from picking up
poisoned grain somewhere, or from a parasite. The weather had been open,
and he could not have been starved. At a distance, the rook's plumage
appears black; but close at hand it will be found a fine blue-black,
glossy, and handsome.

These peacocks are the best "rain-makers" in the place; whenever they cry
much, it is sure to rain; and if they persist day after day, the rain is
equally continuous. From the wall by the barn, or the elm-branch above,
their cry resounds like the wail of a gigantic cat, and is audible half a
mile or more. In the summer, I found one of them, a peacock in the fall
brilliance of his colours, on a rail in the hedge under a spreading maple
bush. His rich-hued neck, the bright light and shadow, the tall green
meadow grass, brought together the finest colours. It is curious that a
bird so distinctly foreign, plumed for the Asiatic sun, should fit so
well with English meads. His splendid neck immediately pleases, pleases
the first time it is seen, and on the fiftieth occasion. I see these
every day, and always stop to look at them; the colour excites the sense
of beauty in the eye, and the shape satisfies the idea of form. The
undulating curve of the neck is at once approved by the intuitive
judgment of the mind, and it is a pleasure to the mind to reiterate that
judgment frequently. It needs no teaching to see its beauty--the feeling
comes of itself.

How different with the turkey-cock which struts round the same barn! A
fine big bird he is, no doubt; but there is no intrinsic beauty about
him; on the contrary, there is something fantastic in his style and
plumage. He has a way of drooping his wings as if they were armour-plates
to shield him from a shot. The ornaments upon his head and beak are in
the most awkward position. He was put together in a dream, of uneven and
odd pieces that live and move, but do not fit. Ponderously gawky, he
steps as if the world was his, like a "motley" crowned in sport. He is
good eating, but he is not beautiful. After the eye has been accustomed
to him for some time--after you have fed him every day and come to take
an interest in him--after you have seen a hundred turkey-cocks, then he
may become passable, or, if you have the fancier's taste, exquisite.
Education is requisite first; you do not fall in love at first sight. The
same applies to fancy-pigeons, and indeed many pet animals, as pugs,
which come in time to be animated with a soul in some people's eyes.
Compare a pug with a greyhound straining at the leash. Instantly he is
slipped he is gone as a wave let loose. His flexible back bends and
undulates, arches and unarches, rises and falls as a wave rises and rolls
on. His pliant ribs open; his whole frame "gives" and stretches, and
closing again in a curve, springs forward. Movement is as easy to him as
to the wave, which melting, is remoulded, and sways onward. The curve of
the greyhound is not only the line of beauty, but a line which suggests
motion; and it is the idea of motion, I think, which so strongly appeals
to the mind.

We are often scornfully treated as a nation by people who write about
art, because they say we have no taste; we cannot make art jugs for the
mantelpiece, crockery for the bracket, screens for the fire; we cannot
even decorate the wall of a room as it should be done. If these are the
standards by which a sense of art is to be tried, their scorn is to a
certain degree just. But suppose we try another standard. Let us put
aside the altogether false opinion that art consists alone in something
actually made, or painted, or decorated, in carvings, colourings, touches
of brush or chisel. Let us look at our lives. I mean to say that there is
no nation so thoroughly and earnestly artistic as the English in their
lives, their joys, their thoughts, their hopes. Who loves nature like an
Englishman? Do Italians care for their pale skies? I never heard so. We
go all over the world in search of beauty--to the keen north, to the cape
whence the midnight sun is visible, to the extreme south, to the interior
of Africa, gazing at the vast expanse of Tanganyika or the marvellous
falls of the Zambesi. We admire the temples and tombs and palaces of
India; we speak of the Alhambra of Spain almost in whispers, so deep is
our reverent admiration; we visit the Parthenon. There is not a picture
or a statue in Europe we have not sought. We climb the mountains for
their views and the sense of grandeur they inspire; we roam over the wide
ocean to the coral islands of the far Pacific; we go deep into the woods
of the West; and we stand dreamily under the Pyramids of the East. What
part is there of the English year which has not been sung by the poets?
all of whom are full of its loveliness; and our greatest of all,
Shakespeare, carries, as it were, armfuls of violets, and scatters roses
and golden wheat across his pages, which are simply fields written with
human life.

This is art indeed--art in the mind and soul, infinitely deeper, surely,
than the construction of crockery, jugs for the mantelpiece, dados, or
even of paintings. The lover of nature has the highest art in his soul.
So, I think, the bluff English farmer who takes such pride and delight in
his dogs and horses, is a much greater man of art than any Frenchman
preparing with cynical dexterity of hand some coloured presentment of
flashy beauty for the _salon_. The English girl who loves her horse--and
English girls _do_ love their horses most intensely--is infinitely more
artistic in that fact than the cleverest painter on enamel. They who love
nature are the real artists; the "artists" are copyists, St. John the
naturalist, when exploring the recesses of the Highlands, relates how he
frequently came in contact with men living in the rude Highland
way--forty years since, no education then--whom at first you would
suppose to be morose, unobservant, almost stupid. But when they found out
that their visitor would stay for hours gazing in admiration at their
glens and mountains, their demeanour changed. Then the truth appeared:
they were fonder than he was himself of the beauties of their hills and
lakes; they could see the art _there_, though perhaps they had never seen
a picture in their lives, certainly not any blue-and-white crockery. The
Frenchman flings his fingers dexterously over the canvas, but he has
never had that in his heart which the rude Highlander had.

The path across the arable field was covered with a design of bird's
feet. The reversed broad arrow of the fore-claws, and the straight line
of the hinder claw, trailed all over it in curving lines. In the dry
dust, their feet were marked as clearly as a seal on wax--their trails
wound this way and that, and crossed as their quick eyes had led them to
turn to find something. For fifty or sixty yards the path was worked with
an inextricable design; it was a pity to step on it and blot out the
traces of those little feet. Their hearts so happy, their eyes so
observant, the earth so bountiful to them with its supply of food, and
the late warmth of the autumn sun lighting up their life. They know and
feel the different loveliness of the seasons as much as we do. Every one
must have noticed their joyousness in spring; they are quiet, but so
very, very busy in the height of summer; as autumn comes on they
obviously delight in the occasional hours of warmth. The marks of their
little feet are almost sacred--a joyous life has been there--do not
obliterate it. It is so delightful to know that something is happy.

The hawthorn hedge that goes down the slope is more coloured than the
hedges in the sheltered plain. Yonder, a low bush on the brow is a deep
crimson; the hedge as it descends varies from brown to yellow, dotted
with red haws, and by the gateway has another spot of crimson. The lime
trees turn yellow from top to bottom, all the leaves together; the elms
by one or two branches at a time. A lime tree thus entirely coloured
stands side by side with an elm, their boughs intermingling; the elm is
green except a line at the outer extremity of its branches. A red light
as of fire plays in the beeches, so deep is their orange tint in which
the sunlight is caught. An oak is dotted with buff, while yet the main
body of the foliage is untouched. With these tints and sunlight, nature
gives us so much more than the tree gives. A tree is nothing but a tree
in itself: but with light and shadow, green leaves moving, a bird
singing, another moving to and fro--in autumn with colour--the boughs are
filled with imagination. There then seems so much more than the mere
tree; the timber of the trunk, the mere sticks of the branches, the
wooden framework is animated with a life. High above, a lark sings, not
for so long as in spring--the October song is shorter--but still he
sings. If you love colour, plant maple; maple bushes colour a whole
hedge. Upon the bank of a pond, the brown oak-leaves which have fallen
are reflected in the still deep water.

It is from the hedges that taste must be learned. A garden abuts on these
fields, and being on slightly rising ground, the maple bushes, the brown
and yellow and crimson hawthorn, the limes and elms, are all visible from
it; yet it is surrounded by stiff, straight iron railings, unconcealed
even by the grasses, which are carefully cut down with the docks and
nettles, that do their best, three or four times in the summer, to hide
the blank iron. Within these iron railings stands a row of _arbor vitae_,
upright, and stiff likewise, and among them a few other evergreens; and
that is all the shelter the lawn and flower-beds have from the east wind,
blowing for miles over open country, or from the glowing sun of August.
This garden belongs to a gentleman who would certainly spare no moderate
expense to improve it, and yet there it remains, the blankest, barest,
most miserable-looking square of ground the eye can find; the only piece
of ground from which the eye turns away; for even the potato-field close
by, the common potato-field, had its colour in bright poppies, and there
were partridges in it, and at the edges, fine growths of mallow and its
mauve flowers. Wild parsley, still green in the shelter of the hazel
stoles, is there now on the bank, a thousand times sweeter to the eye
than bare iron and cold evergreens. Along that hedge, the white bryony
wound itself in the most beautiful manner, completely covering the upper
part of the thick brambles, a robe thrown over the bushes; its deep cut
leaves, its countless tendrils, its flowers, and presently the berries,
giving pleasure every time one passed it. Indeed, you could not pass
without stopping to look at it, and wondering if any one ever so skilful,
even those sure-handed Florentines Mr. Ruskin thinks so much of, could
ever draw that intertangled mass of lines. Nor could you easily draw the
leaves and head of the great parsley--commonest of hedge-plants--the deep
indented leaves, and the shadow by which to express them. There was work
enough in that short piece of hedge by the potato-field for a good pencil
every day the whole summer. And when done, you would not have been
satisfied with it, but only have learned how complex and how thoughtful
and far reaching Nature is in the simplest of things. But with a
straight-edge or ruler, any one could draw the iron railings in half an
hour, and a surveyor's pupil could make them look as well as Millais
himself. Stupidity to stupidity, genius to genius; any hard fist can
manage iron railings; a hedge is a task for the greatest.

Those, therefore, who really wish their gardens or grounds, or any place,
beautiful, must get that greatest of geniuses, Nature, to help them, and
give their artist freedom to paint to fancy, for it is Nature's
imagination which delights us--as I tried to explain about the tree, the
imagination, and not the fact of the timber and sticks. For those white
bryony leaves and slender spirals and exquisitely defined flowers are
full of imagination, products of a sunny dream, and tinted so tastefully,
that although they are green, and all about them is green too, yet the
plant is quite distinct, and in no degree confused or lost in the mass of
leaves under and by it. It stands out, and yet without violent contrast.
All these beauties of form and colour surround the place, and try, as it
were, to march in and take possession, but are shut out by straight iron
railings. Wonderful it is that education should make folk tasteless!
Such, certainly, seems to be the case in a great measure, and not in our
own country only, for those who know Italy tell us that the fine old
gardens there, dating back to the days of the Medici, are being despoiled
of ilex and made formal and straight. Is all the world to be
Versaillised?

Scarcely two hundred yards from these cold iron railings, which even
nettles and docks would hide if they could, and thistles strive to
conceal, but are not permitted, there is an old cottage by the roadside.
The roof is of old tile, once red, now dull from weather; the walls some
tone of yellow; the folk are poor. Against it there grows a vigorous
plant of jessamine, a still finer rose, a vine covers the lean-to at one
end, and tea-plant the corner of the wall; beside these, there is a
yellow-flowering plant, the name of which I forget at the moment, also
trained to the walls; and ivy. Altogether, six plants grow up the walls
of the cottage; and over the wicket-gate there is a rude arch--a
framework of tall sticks--from which droop thick bunches of hops. It is a
very commonplace sort of cottage; nothing artistically picturesque about
it, no effect of gable or timber-work; it stands by the roadside in the
most commonplace way, and yet it pleases. They have called in Nature,
that great genius, and let the artist have his own way. In Italy, the
art-country, they cut down the ilex trees, and get the surveyor's pupil
with straight-edge and ruler to put it right and square for them. Our
over-educated and well-to-do people set iron railings round about their
blank pleasure-grounds, which the potato-field laughs at in bright
poppies; and actually one who has some fine park-grounds has lifted up on
high a mast and weather-vane! a thing useful on the sea-board at
coastguard stations for signalling, but oh! how repellent and straight
and stupid among clumps of graceful elms!


II

The dismal pits in a disused brickfield, unsightly square holes in a
waste, are full in the shallow places of an aquatic grass, Reed Canary
Grass, I think, which at this time of mists stretches forth sharp-pointed
tongues over the stagnant water. These sharp-pointed leaf-tongues are all
on one side of the stalks, so that the most advanced project across the
surface, as if the water were the canvas, and the leaves drawn on it. For
water seems always to rise away from you--to slope slightly upwards; even
a pool has that appearance, and therefore anything standing in it is
drawn on it as you might sketch on this paper. You see the water beyond
and above the top of the plant, and the smooth surface gives the leaf and
stalk a sharp, clear definition. But the mass of the tall grass crowds
together, every leaf painted yellow by the autumn, a thick cover at the
pit-side. This tall grass always awakes my fancy, its shape partly,
partly its thickness, perhaps; and yet these feelings are not to be
analysed. I like to look at it; I like to stand or move among it on the
bank of a brook, to feel it touch and rustle against me. A sense of
wildness comes with its touch, and I feel a little as I might feel if
there was a vast forest round about. As a few strokes from a loving hand
will soothe a weary forehead, so the gentle pressure of the wild grass
soothes and strokes away the nervous tension born of civilised life.

I could write a whole history of it; the time when the leaves were fresh
and green, and the sedge-birds frequented it; the time when the moorhen's
young crept after their mother through its recesses; from the singing of
the cuckoo by the river, till now brown and yellow leaves strew the
water. They strew, too, the dry brown grass of the land, thick tuffets,
and lie even among the rushes, blown hither from the distant trees. The
wind works its full will over the exposed waste, and drives through the
reed-grass, scattering the stalks aside, and scarce giving them time to
spring together again, when the following blast a second time divides
them.

A cruder piece of ground, ruder and more dismal in its unsightly holes,
could not be found; and yet, because of the reed-grass, it is made as it
were full of thought. I wonder the painters, of whom there are so many
nowadays, armies of amateurs, do not sometimes take these scraps of earth
and render into them the idea which fills a clod with beauty. In one such
dismal pit--not here--I remember there grew a great quantity of
bulrushes. Another was surrounded with such masses of swamp-foliage that
it reminded those who saw it of the creeks in semi-tropical countries.
But somehow they do not seem to see these things, but go on the old
mill-round of scenery, exhausted many a year since. They do not see them,
perhaps, because most of those who have educated themselves in the
technique of painting are city-bred, and can never have the _feeling_ of
the country, however fond they may be of it.

In those fields of which I was writing the other day, I found an artist
at work at his easel; and a pleasant nook be had chosen. His brush did
its work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated command of his
materials. He could delineate whatever he selected with technical skill
at all events. He had pitched his easel where two hedges formed an angle,
and one of them was full of oak-trees. The hedge was singularly full of
"bits"--bryony, tangles of grasses, berries, boughs half-tinted and
boughs green, hung as it were with pictures like the wall of a room.
Standing as near as I could without disturbing him, I found that the
subject of his canvas was none of these. It was that old stale and dull
device of a rustic bridge spanning a shallow stream crossing a lane. Some
figure stood on the bridge--the old, old trick. He was filling up the
hedge of the lane with trees from the hedge, and they were cleverly
executed. But why drag them into this fusty scheme, which has appeared in
every child's sketch-book for fifty years? Why not have simply painted
the beautiful hedge at hand, purely and simply, a hedge hung with
pictures for any one to copy? The field in which he had pitched his easel
is full of fine trees and good "effects." But no; we must have the
ancient and effete old story. This is not all the artist's fault, because
he must in many cases paint what he can sell; and if his public will only
buy effete old stories, he cannot help it. Still, I think if a painter
_did_ paint that hedge in its fulness of beauty, just simply as it stands
in the mellow autumn light, it would win approval of the best people, and
that ultimately, a succession of such work would pay.

The clover was dying down, and the plough would soon be among it--the
earth was visible in patches. Out in one of these bare patches there was
a young mouse, so chilled by the past night that his dull senses did not
appear conscious of my presence. He had crept out on the bare earth
evidently to feel the warmth of the sun, almost the last hour he would
enjoy. He looked about for food, but found none; his short span of life
was drawing to a close; even when at last he saw me, he could only run a
few inches under cover of a dead clover-plant. Thousands upon thousands
of mice perish like this as the winter draws on, born too late in the
year to grow strong enough or clever enough to prepare a store. Other
kinds of mice perish like leaves at the first blast of cold air. Though
but a mouse, to me it was very wretched to see the chilled creature, so
benumbed as to have almost lost its sense of danger. There is something
so ghastly in birth that immediately leads to death; a sentient creature
born only to wither. The earth offered it no help, nor the declining sun;
all things organised seem to depend so much on circumstances. Nothing but
pity can be felt for thousands upon thousands of such organisms. But
thus, too, many a miserable human being has perished in the great
Metropolis, dying, chilled and benumbed, of starvation, and finding the
hearts of fellow-creatures as bare and cold as the earth of the
clover-field.

In these fields outside London the flowers are peculiarly rich in colour.
The common mallow, whose flower is usually a light mauve, has here a
deep, almost purple bloom; the bird's-foot lotus is a deep orange. The
fig-wort, which is generally two or three feet high, stands in one ditch
fully eight feet, and the stem is more than half an inch square. A
fertile soil has doubtless something to do with this colour and vigour.
The red admiral butterflies, too, seemed in the summer more brilliant
than usual. One very fine one, whose broad wings stretched out like fans,
looked simply splendid floating round and round the willows which marked
the margin of a dry pool. His blue markings were really blue--blue
velvet--his red, and the white stroke shone as if sunbeams were in his
wings. I wish there were more of these butterflies; in summer, dry
summer, when the flowers seem gone and the grass is not so dear to us,
and the leaves are dull with heat, a little colour is so pleasant. To me,
colour is a sort of food; every spot of colour is a drop of wine to the
spirit. I used to take my folding-stool on those long, heated days, which
made the summer of 1884 so conspicuous among summers, down to the shadow
of a row of elms by a common cabbage-field. Their shadow was nearly as
hot as the open sunshine; the dry leaves did not absorb the heat that
entered them, and the dry hedge and dry earth poured heat up as the sun
poured it down. Dry, dead leaves--dead with heat, as with frost--strewed
the grass, dry, too, and withered at my feet.

But among the cabbages, which were very small, there grew thousands of
poppies, fifty times more poppies than cabbage, so that the pale green of
the cabbage-leaves was hidden by the scarlet petals falling wide open to
the dry air. There was a broad band of scarlet colour all along the side
of the field, and it was this which brought me to the shade of those
particular elms. The use of the cabbages was in this way: they fetched
for me all the white butterflies of the neighbourhood, and they
fluttered, hundreds and hundreds of white butterflies, a constant stream
and flow of them over the broad band of scarlet. Humble-bees came too;
bur-bur-bur; and the buzz, and the flutter of the white wings over those
fixed red butterflies the poppies, the flutter and sound and colour
pleased me in the dry heat of the day. Sometimes I set my camp-stool by a
humble-bees' nest. I like to see and hear them go in and out, so happy,
busy, and wild; the humble-bee is a favourite. That summer their nests
were very plentiful; but although the heat might have seemed so
favourable to them, the flies were not at all numerous, I mean
out-of-doors. Wasps, on the contrary, flourished to an extraordinary
degree. One willow tree particularly took their fancy; there was a swarm
in the tree for weeks, attracted by some secretion; the boughs and leaves
were yellow with wasps. But it seemed curious that flies should not be
more numerous than usual; they are dying now fast enough, except a few of
the large ones, that still find some sugar in the flowers of the ivy. The
finest show of ivy flower is among some yew trees; the dark ivy has
filled the dark yew tree, and brought out its pale yellow-green flowers
in the sombre boughs. Last night, a great fly, the last in the house,
buzzed into my candle. I detest flies, but I was sorry for his scorched
wings; the fly itself hateful, its wings so beautifully made. I have
sometimes picked a feather from the dirt of the road and placed it on the
grass. It is contrary to one's feelings to see so beautiful a thing lying
in the mud. Towards my window now, as I write, there comes suddenly a
shower of yellow leaves, wrested out by main force from the high elms;
the blue sky behind them, they droop slowly, borne onward, twirling,
fluttering towards me--a cloud of autumn butterflies.

A spring rises on the summit of a green brow that overlooks the meadows
for miles. The spot is not really very high, still it is the highest
ground in that direction for a long distance, and it seems singular to
find water on the top of the hill, a thing common enough, but still
sufficiently opposed to general impressions to appear remarkable. In this
shallow water, says a faint story--far off, faint and uncertain, like the
murmur of a distant cascade--two ladies and some soldiers lost their
lives. The brow is defended by thick bramble-bushes, which bore a fine
crop of blackberries that autumn, to the delight of the boys; and these
bushes partly conceal the sharpness of the short descent. But once your
attention is drawn to it, you see that it has all the appearance of
having been artificially sloped, like a rampart, or rather a glacis. The
grass is green and the sward soft, being moistened by the spring, except
in one spot, where the grass is burnt up under the heat of the summer
sun, indicating the existence of foundations beneath.

There is a beautiful view from this spot; but leaving that now, and
wandering on among the fields, presently you may find a meadow of
peculiar shape, extremely long and narrow, half a mile long, perhaps; and
this the folk will tell you was the King's Drive, or ride. Stories there
are, too, of subterranean passages--there are always such stories in the
neighbourhood of ancient buildings--I remember one, said to be three
miles long; it led to an abbey. The lane leads on, bordered with high
hawthorn hedges, and occasionally a stout hawthorn tree, hardy and
twisted by the strong hands of the passing years; thick now with red
haws, and the haunt of the redwings, whose "chuck-chuck" is heard every
minute; but the birds themselves always perch on the outer side of the
hedge. They are not far ahead, but they always keep on the safe side,
flying on twenty yards or so, but never coming to my side.

The little pond, which in summer was green with weed, is now yellow with
the fallen hawthorn-leaves; the pond is choked with them. The lane has
been slowly descending; and now, on looking through a gateway, an ancient
building stands up on the hill, sharply defined against the sky. It is
the banqueting hall of a palace of old times, in which kings and princes
once sat at their meat after the chase. This is the centre of those dim
stories which float like haze over the meadows around. Many a wild red
stag has been carried thither after the hunt, and many a wild boar slain
in the glades of the forest.

The acorns are dropping now as they dropped five centuries since, in the
days when the wild boars fed so greedily upon them; the oaks are broadly
touched with brown; the bramble thickets in which the boars hid, green,
but strewn with the leaves that have fallen from the lofty trees. Though
meadow, arable, and hop-fields hold now the place of the forest, a goodly
remnant remains, for every hedge is full of oak and elm and ash; maple
too, and the lesser bushes. At a little distance, so thick are the trees,
the whole country appears a wood, and it is easy to see what a forest it
must have been centuries ago.

The Prince leaving the grim walls of the Tower of London by the
Water-gate, and dropping but a short way down with the tide, could mount
his horse on the opposite bank, and reach his palace here, in the midst
of the thickest woods and wildest country, in half an hour. Thence every
morning setting forth upon the chase, he could pass the day in joyous
labours, and the evening in feasting, still within call--almost within
sound of horn--of the Tower, if any weighty matter demanded his presence.

In our time, the great city has widened out, and comes at this day down
to within three miles of the hunting-palace. There still intervenes a
narrow space between the last house of London and the ancient Forest
Hall, a space of corn-field and meadow; the last house, for although not
nominally London, there is no break of continuity in the bricks and
mortar thence to London Bridge. London is within a stone's-throw, as it
were, and yet, to this day the forest lingers, and it is country. The
very atmosphere is different. That smoky thickness characteristic of the
suburbs ceases as you ascend the gradual rise, and leave the outpost of
bricks and mortar behind. The air becomes clear and strong, till on the
brow by the spring on a windy day it is almost like sea-air. It comes
over the trees, over the hills, and is sweet with the touch of grass and
leaf. There is no gas, no sulphurous acid in that. As the Edwards and
Henries breathed it centuries since, so it can be inhaled now. The sun
that shone on the red deer is as bright now as then; the berries are
thick on the bushes; there is colour in the leaf. The forest is gone; but
the spirit of nature stays, and can be found by those who search for it.
Dearly as I love the open air, I cannot regret the mediaeval days. I do
not wish them back again, I would sooner fight in the foremost ranks of
Time. Nor do we need them, for the spirit of nature stays, and will
always be here, no matter to how high a pinnacle of thought the human
mind may attain; still the sweet air, and the hills, and the sea, and the
sun, will always be with us.



ON THE LONDON ROAD


The road comes straight from London, which is but a very short distance
off, within a walk, yet the village it passes is thoroughly a village,
and not suburban, not in the least like Sydenham, or Croydon, or Balham,
or Norwood, as perfect a village in every sense as if it stood fifty
miles in the country. There is one long street, just as would be found in
the far west, with fields at each end. But through this long street, and
on and out into the open, is continually pouring the human living
undergrowth of that vast forest of life, London. The nondescript
inhabitants of the thousand and one nameless streets of the unknown east
are great travellers, and come forth into the country by this main desert
route. For what end? Why this tramping and ceaseless movement? what do
they buy, what do they sell, how do they live? They pass through the
village street and out into the country in an endless stream on the
shutter on wheels. This is the true London vehicle, the characteristic
conveyance, as characteristic as the Russian droshky, the gondola at
Venice, or the caique at Stamboul. It is the camel of the London desert
routes; routes which run right through civilisation, but of which daily
paper civilisation is ignorant. People who can pay for a daily paper are
so far above it; a daily paper is the mark of the man who is in
civilisation.

Take an old-fashioned shutter and balance it on the axle of a pair of low
wheels, and you have the London camel in principle. To complete it add
shafts in front, and at the rear run a low free-board, as a sailor would
say, along the edge, that the cargo may not be shaken off. All the skill
of the fashionable brougham-builders in Long Acre could not contrive a
vehicle which would meet the requirements of the case so well as this. On
the desert routes of Palestine a donkey becomes romantic; in a
coster-monger's barrow he is only an ass; the donkey himself doesn't see
the distinction. He draws a good deal of human nature about in these
barrows, and perhaps finds it very much the same in Surrey and Syria. For
if any one thinks the familiar barrow is merely a truck for the
conveyance of cabbages and carrots, and for the exposure of the same to
the choice of housewives in Bermondsey, he is mistaken. Far beyond that,
it is the symbol, the solid expression, of life itself to the owner, his
family, and circle of connections, more so than even the ship to the
sailor, as the sailor, no matter how he may love his ship, longs for
port, and the joys of the shore, but the barrow folk are always at sea on
land, Such care has to be taken of the miserable pony or the shamefaced
jackass; he has to be groomed, and fed, and looked to in his shed, and
this occupies three or four of the family at least, lads and strapping
young girls, night and morning. Besides which, the circle of connections
look in to see how he is going on, and to hear the story of the day's
adventures, and what is proposed for to-morrow. Perhaps one is invited to
join the next excursion, and thinks as much of it as others might do of
an invitation for a cruise in the Mediterranean. Any one who watches the
succession of barrows driving along through the village out into the
fields of Kent can easily see how they bear upon their wheels the
fortunes of whole families and of their hangers-on. Sometimes there is a
load of pathos, of which the race of the ass has carried a good deal in
all ages. More often it is a heavy lump of dull, evil, and exceedingly
stupid cunning. The wild evil of the Spanish contrabandistas seems atoned
by that wildness; but this dull wickedness has no flush of colour, no
poppy on its dirt heaps.

Over one barrow the sailors had fixed up a tent--canvas stretched from
corner poles, two fellows sat almost on the shafts outside; they were
well. Under the canvas there lay a young fellow white and emaciated,
whose face was drawn down with severe suffering of some kind, and his
dark eyes, enlarged and accentuated, looked as if touched with
belladonna. The family council at home in the close and fetid court had
resolved themselves into a medical board and ordered him to the sunny
Riviera. The ship having been fitted up for the invalid, away they sailed
for the south, out from the ends of the earth of London into the ocean of
green fields and trees, thence past many an island village, and so to the
shores where the Kentish hops were yellowing fast for the pickers. There,
in the vintage days, doubtless he found solace, and possibly recovery. To
catch a glimpse of that dark and cavernous eye under the shade of the
travelling tent reminded me of the eyes of the wounded in the
ambulance-waggons that came pouring into Brussels after Sedan. In the
dusk of the lovely September evenings--it was a beautiful September, the
lime-leaves were just tinted with orange--the waggons came in a long
string, the wounded and maimed lying in them, packed carefully, and
rolled round, as it were, with wadding to save them from the jolts of the
ruts and stones. It is fifteen years ago, and yet I can still distinctly
see the eyes of one soldier looking at me from his berth in the waggon.
The glow of intense pain--the glow of long-continued agony--lit them up
as coals that smouldering are suddenly fanned. Pain brightens the eyes as
much as joy, there is a fire in the brain behind it; it is the flame in
the mind you see, and not the eyeball. A thought that might easily be
rendered romantic, but consider how these poor fellows appeared
afterwards. Bevies of them hopped about Brussels in their red-and-blue
uniforms, some on crutches, some with two sticks, some with sleeves
pinned to their breasts, looking exactly like a company of dolls a cruel
child had mutilated, snapping a foot off here, tearing out a leg here,
and battering the face of a third. Little men most of them--the bowl of a
German pipe inverted would have covered them all, within which, like bees
in a hive, they might hum "Te Deum Bismarckum Laudamus." But the romantic
flame in the eye is not always so beautiful to feel as to read about.

Another shutter on wheels went by one day with one little pony in the
shafts, and a second harnessed in some way at the side, so as to assist
in pulling, but without bearing any share of the load. On this shutter
eight men and boys balanced themselves; enough for the Olympian height of
a four-in-hand. Eight fellows perched round the edge like shipwrecked
mariners, clinging to one plank. They were so balanced as to weigh
chiefly on the axle, yet in front of such a mountain of men, such a vast
bundle of ragged clothes, the ponies appeared like rats.

On a Sunday morning two fellows came along on their shutter: they
overtook a girl who was walking on the pavement, and one of them, more
sallow and cheeky than his companion, began to talk to her. "That's a
nice nosegay, now--give us a rose. Come and ride--there's plenty of room.
Won't speak? Now, you'll tell us if this is the road to London Bridge."
She nodded. She was dressed in full satin for Sunday; her class think
much of satin. She was leading two children, one in each hand, clean and
well-dressed. She walked more lightly than a servant does, and evidently
lived at home; she did not go to service. Tossing her head, she looked
the other way, for you see the fellow on the shutter was dirty, not
"dressed" at all, though it was Sunday, poor folks' ball-day; a dirty,
rough fellow, with a short clay pipe in his mouth, a chalky-white
face--apparently from low dissipation--a disreputable rascal, a
monstrously impudent "chap," a true London mongrel. He "cheeked" her; she
tossed her head, and looked the other way. But by-and-by she could not
help a sly glance at him, not an angry glance--a look as much as to say,
"You're a man, anyway, and you've the good taste to admire me, and the
courage to speak to me; you're dirty, but you're a man. If you were
well-dressed, or if it wasn't Sunday, or if it was dark, or nobody about,
I wouldn't mind; I'd let you 'cheek' me, though I have got satin on." The
fellow "cheeked" her again, told her she had a pretty face, "cheeked" her
right and left. She looked away, but half smiled; she had to keep up her
dignity, she did not feel it. She would have liked to have joined company
with him. His leer grew leerier--the low, cunning leer, so peculiar to
the London mongrel, that seems to say, "I am so intensely knowing; I am
so very much all there;" and yet the leerer always remains in a dirty
dress, always smokes the coarsest tobacco in the nastiest of pipes, and
rides on a barrow to the end of his life. For his leery cunning is so
intensely stupid that, in fact, he is as "green" as grass; his leer and
his foul mouth keep him in the gutter to his very last day. How much more
successful plain, simple straightforwardness would be! The pony went on a
little, but they drew rein, and waited for the girl again; and again he
"cheeked" her. Still, she looked away, but she did not make any attempt
to escape by the side-path, nor show resentment. No; her face began to
glow, and once or twice she answered him, but still she would not quite
join company. If only it had not been Sunday--if it had been a lonely
road, and not so near the village, if she had not had the two tell-tale
children with her--she would have been very good friends with the dirty,
chalky, ill-favoured, and ill-savoured wretch. At the parting of the
roads each went different ways, but she could not help looking back.

He was a thorough specimen of the leery London mongrel. That hideous leer
is so repulsive--one cannot endure it--but it is so common; you see it on
the faces of four-fifths of the ceaseless stream that runs out from the
ends of the earth of London into the green sea of the country. It
disfigures the faces of the carters who go with the waggons and other
vehicles--not nomads, but men in steady employ; it defaces--absolutely
defaces--the workmen who go forth with vans, with timber, with
carpenters' work, and the policeman standing at the corners, in London
itself particularly. The London leer hangs on their faces. The Mosaic
account of the Creation is discredited in these days, the last revelation
took place at Beckenham; the Beckenham revelation is superior to Mount
Sinai, yet the consideration of that leer might suggest the idea of a
fall of man even to an Amoebist. The horribleness of it is in this way,
it hints--it does more than hint, it conveys the leerer's decided
opinion--that you, whether you may be man or woman, must necessarily be
as coarse as himself. Especially he wants to impress that view upon every
woman who chances to cross his glance. The fist of Hercules is needed to
dash it out of his face.



RED ROOFS OF LONDON


Tiles and tile roofs have a curious way of tumbling to pieces in an
irregular and eye-pleasing manner. The roof-tree bends, bows a little
under the weight, curves in, and yet preserves a sharpness at each end.
The Chinese exaggerate this curve of set purpose. Our English curve is
softer, being the product of time, which always works in true taste. The
mystery of tile-laying is not known to every one; for to all appearance
tiles seem to be put on over a thin bed of hay or hay-like stuff. Lately
they have begun to use some sort of tarpaulin or a coarse material of
that kind; but the old tiles, I fancy, were comfortably placed on a
shake-down of hay. When one slips off, little bits of hay stick up; and
to these the sparrows come, removing it bit by bit to line their nests.
If they can find a gap they get in, and a fresh couple is started in
life. By-and-by a chimney is overthrown during a twist of the wind, and
half a dozen tiles are shattered. Time passes; and at last the tiler
arrives to mend the mischief. His labour leaves a light red patch on the
dark dull red of the breadth about it. After another while the leaks
along the ridge need plastering: mortar is laid on to stay the inroad of
wet, adding a dull white and forming a rough, uncertain undulation along
the general drooping curve. Yellow edgings of straw project under the
eaves--the work of the sparrows. A cluster of blue-tinted pigeons gathers
about the chimney-side; the smoke that comes out of the stack droops and
floats sideways, downwards, as if the chimney enjoyed the smother as a
man enjoys his pipe. Shattered here and cracked yonder, some missing,
some overlapping in curves, the tiles have an aspect of irregular
existence. They are not fixed, like slates, as it were for ever: they
have a newness, and then a middle-age, and a time of decay like human
beings.

One roof is not much; but it is often a study. Put a thousand roofs, say
rather thousands of red-tiled roofs, and overlook them--not at a great
altitude but at a pleasant easy angle--and then you have the groundwork
of the first view of London over Bermondsey from the railway. I say
groundwork, because the roofs seem the level and surface of the earth,
while the glimpses of streets are glimpses of catacombs. A city--as
something to look at--depends very much on its roofs. If a city have no
character in its roofs it stirs neither heart nor thought. These
red-tiled roofs of Bermondsey, stretching away mile upon mile, and
brought up at the extremity with thin masts rising above the mist--these
red-tiled roofs have a distinctiveness, a character; they are something
to think about. Nowhere else is there an entrance to a city like this.
The roads by which you approach them give you distant aspects--minarets,
perhaps, in the East, domes in Italy; but, coming nearer, the highway
somehow plunges into houses, confounding you with facades, and the real
place is hidden. Here from the railway you see at once the vastness of
London. Roof-tree behind roof-tree, ridge behind ridge, is drawn along in
succession, line behind line till they become as close together as the
test-lines used for microscopes. Under this surface of roofs what a
profundity of life there is! Just as the great horses in the waggons of
London streets convey the idea of strength, so the endlessness of the
view conveys the idea of a mass of life. Life converges from every
quarter. The iron way has many ruts: the rails are its ruts; and by each
of these a ceaseless stream of men and women pours over the tiled roofs
into London. They come from the populous suburbs, from far-away towns and
quiet villages, and from over sea.

Glance down as you pass into the excavations, the streets, beneath the
red surface: you catch a glimpse of men and women hastening to and fro,
of vehicles, of horses struggling with mighty loads, of groups at the
corners, and fragments, as it were, of crowds. Busy life everywhere: no
stillness, no quiet, no repose. Life crowded and crushed together; life
that has hardly room to live. If the train slackens, look in at the open
windows of the houses level with the line--they are always open for air,
smoke-laden as it is--and see women and children with scarce room to
move, the bed and the dining-table in the same apartment. For they dine
and sleep and work and play all at the same time. A man works at night
and sleeps by day: he lies yonder as calmly as if in a quiet country
cottage. The children have no place to play in but the living-room or the
street. It is not squalor--it is crowded life. The people are pushed
together by the necessities of existence. These people have no dislike to
it at all: it is right enough to them, and so long as business is brisk
they are happy. The man who lies sleeping so calmly seems to me to
indicate the immensity of the life around more than all the rest. He is
oblivious of it all; it does not make him nervous or wakeful; he is so
used to it, and bred to it, that it seems to him nothing. When he is
awake lie does not see it; now he sleeps he does not hear it. It is only
in great woods that you cannot see the trees. He is like a leaf in a
forest--he is not conscious of it. Long hours of work have given him
slumber; and as he sleeps he seems to express by contrast the immensity
and endlessness of the life around him.

Sometimes a floating haze, now thicker here, and now lit up yonder by the
sunshine, brings out objects more distinctly than a clear atmosphere.
Away there tall thin masts stand out, rising straight up above the red
roofs. There is a faint colour on them; the yards are dark--being
inclined, they do not reflect the light at an angle to reach us.
Half-furled canvas droops in folds, now swelling a little as the wind
blows, now heavily sinking. One white sail is set and gleams alone among
the dusky folds; for the canvas at large is dark with coal-dust, with
smoke, with the grime that settles everywhere where men labour with bare
arms and chests. Still and quiet as trees the masts rise into the hazy
air; who would think, merely to look at them, of the endless labour they
mean? The labour to load, and the labour to unload; the labour at sea,
and the long hours of ploughing the waves by night; the labour at the
warehouses; the labour in the fields, the mines, the mountains; the
labour in the factories. Ever and again the sunshine gleams now on this
group of masts, now on that; for they stand in groups as trees often
grow, a thicket here and a thicket yonder. Labour to obtain the material,
labour to bring it hither, labour to force it into shape--work without
end. Masts are always dreamy to look at: they speak a romance of the sea;
of unknown lands; of distant forests aglow with tropical colours and
abounding with strange forms of life. In the hearts of most of us there
is always a desire for something beyond experience. Hardly any of us but
have thought, Some day I will go on a long voyage; but the years go by,
and still we have not sailed.



A WET NIGHT IN LONDON


Opaque from rain drawn in slant streaks by wind and speed across the
pane, the window of the railway carriage lets nothing be seen but stray
flashes of red lights--the signals rapidly passed. Wrapped in thick
overcoat, collar turned up to his ears, warm gloves on his hands, and a
rug across his knees, the traveller may well wonder how those red signals
and the points are worked out in the storms of wintry London, Rain blown
in gusts through the misty atmosphere, gas and smoke-laden, deepens the
darkness; the howl of the blast humming in the telegraph wires, hurtling
round the chimney-pots on a level with the line, rushing up from the
archways; steam from the engines, roar, and whistle, shrieking brakes,
and grinding wheels--how is the traffic worked at night in safety over
the inextricable windings of the iron roads into the City?

At London Bridge the door is opened by some one who gets out, and the
cold air comes in; there is a rush of people in damp coats, with dripping
umbrellas, and time enough to notice the archaeologically interesting
wooden beams which support the roof of the South-Eastern station. Antique
beams they are, good old Norman oak, such as you may sometimes find in
very old country churches that have not been restored, such as yet exist
in Westminster Hall, temp. Rufus or Stephen, or so. Genuine old woodwork,
worth your while to go and see. Take a sketch-book and make much of the
ties and angles and bolts; ask Whistler or Macbeth, or some one to etch
them, get the Royal Antiquarian Society to pay a visit and issue a
pamphlet; gaze at them reverently and earnestly, for they are not easily
to be matched in London. Iron girders and spacious roofs are the modern
fashion; here we have the Middle Ages well-preserved--slam! the door is
banged-to, onwards, over the invisible river, more red signals and rain,
and finally the terminus. Five hundred well-dressed and civilised
savages, wet, cross, weary, all anxious to get in--eager for home and
dinner; five hundred stiffened and cramped folk equally eager to get
out--mix on a narrow platform, with a train running off one side, and a
detached engine gliding gently after it. Push, wriggle, wind in and out,
bumps from portmanteaus, and so at last out into the street.

Now, how are you going to get into an omnibus? The street is "up," the
traffic confined to half a narrow thoroughfare, the little space
available at the side crowded with newsvendors whose contents bills are
spotted and blotted with wet, crowded, too, with young girls, bonnetless,
with aprons over their heads, whose object is simply to do nothing--just
to stand in the rain and chaff; the newsvendors yell their news in your
ears, then, finding you don't purchase, they "Yah!" at you; an aged crone
begs you to buy "lights"; a miserable young crone, with pinched face,
offers artificial flowers--oh, Naples! Rush comes the rain, and the
gas-lamps are dimmed; whoo-oo comes the wind like a smack; cold drops get
in the ears and eyes; clean wristbands are splotched; greasy mud splashed
over shining boots; some one knocks the umbrella round, and the blast all
but turns it. "Wake up!"--"Now then--stop here all night?"--"Gone to
sleep?" They shout, they curse, they put their hands to their mouths
trumpet wise and bellow at each other, these cabbies, vanmen, busmen, all
angry at the block in the narrow way. The 'bus-driver, with London stout,
and plenty of it, polishing his round cheeks like the brasswork of a
locomotive, his neck well wound and buttressed with thick comforter and
collar, heedeth not, but goes on his round, now fast, now slow, always
stolid and rubicund, the rain running harmlessly from him as if he were
oiled. The conductor, perched like the showman's monkey behind, hops and
twists, and turns now on one foot and now on the other as if the plate
were red-hot; now holds on with one hand, and now dexterously shifts his
grasp; now shouts to the crowd and waves his hands towards the pavement,
and again looks round the edge of the 'bus forwards and curses somebody
vehemently. "Near side up! Look alive! Full inside"--curses, curses,
curses; rain, rain, rain, and no one can tell which is most plentiful.

The cab-horse's head comes nearly inside the 'bus, the 'bus-pole
threatens to poke the hansom in front; the brougham would be careful, for
varnish sake, but is wedged and must take its chance; van-wheels catch
omnibus hubs; hurry, scurry, whip, and drive; slip, slide, bump, rattle,
jar, jostle, an endless stream clattering on, in, out, and round. On,
on--"Stanley, on"--the first and last words of cabby's life; on, on, the
one law of existence in a London street--drive on, stumble or stand,
drive on--strain sinews, crack, splinter--drive on; what a sight to
watch as you wait amid the newsvendors and bonnetless girls for the 'bus
that will not come! Is it real? It seems like a dream, those nightmare
dreams in which you know that you must run, and do run, and yet cannot
lift the legs that are heavy as lead, with the demon behind pursuing, the
demon of Drive-on. Move, or cease to be--pass out of Time or be stirring
quickly; if you stand you must suffer even here on the pavement, splashed
with greasy mud, shoved by coarse ruffianism, however good your
intentions--just dare to stand still! Ideas here for moralising, but I
can't preach with the roar and the din and the wet in my ears, and the
flickering street lamps flaring. That's the 'bus--no; the tarpaulin hangs
down and obscures the inscription; yes. Hi! No heed; how could you be so
confiding as to imagine conductor or driver would deign to see a
signalling passenger; the game is to drive on.

A gentleman makes a desperate rush and grabs the handrail; his foot slips
on the asphalt or wood, which is like oil, he slides, his hat totters;
happily he recovers himself and gets in. In the block the 'bus is stayed
a moment, and somehow we follow, and are landed--"somehow" advisedly. For
how do we get into a 'bus? After the pavement, even this hard seat would
be nearly an easy-chair, were it not for the damp smell of soaked
overcoats, the ceaseless rumble, and the knockings overhead outside. The
noise is immensely worse than the shaking or the steamy atmosphere, the
noise ground into the ears, and wearying the mind to a state of drowsy
narcotism--you become chloroformed through the sense of hearing, a
condition of dreary resignation and uncomfortable ease. The illuminated
shops seem to pass like an endless window without division of doors;
there are groups of people staring in at them in spite of the rain;
ill-clad, half-starving people for the most part; the well-dressed hurry
onwards; they have homes. A dull feeling of satisfaction creeps over you
that you are at least in shelter; the rumble is a little better than the
wind and the rain and the puddles. If the Greek sculptors were to come to
life again and cut us out in bas-relief for another Parthenon, they would
have to represent us shuffling along, heads down and coat-tails flying,
splash-splosh--a nation of umbrellas.

Under a broad archway, gaily lighted, the broad and happy way to a
theatre, there is a small crowd waiting, and among them two ladies, with
their backs to the photographs and bills, looking out into the street.
They stand side by side, evidently quite oblivious and indifferent to the
motley folk about them, chatting and laughing, taking the wet and windy
wretchedness of the night as a joke. They are both plump and
rosy-cheeked, dark eyes gleaming and red lips parted; both decidedly
good-looking, much too rosy and full-faced, too well fed and comfortable
to take a prize from Burne-Jones, very worldly people in the roast-beef
sense. Their faces glow in the bright light--merry sea coal-fire faces;
they have never turned their backs on the good things of this life.
"Never shut the door on good fortune," as Queen Isabella of Spain says.
Wind and rain may howl and splash, but here are two faces they never have
touched--rags and battered shoes drift along the pavement--no wet feet or
cold necks here. Best of all they glow with good spirits, they laugh,
they chat; they are full of enjoyment, clothed thickly with health and
happiness, as their shoulders--good wide shoulders--are thickly wrapped
in warmest furs. The 'bus goes on, and they are lost to view; if you came
back in an hour you would find them still there without doubt--still
jolly, chatting, smiling, waiting perhaps for the stage, but anyhow far
removed, like the goddesses on Olympus, from the splash and misery of
London. Drive on.

The head of a great grey horse in a van drawn up by the pavement, the
head and neck stand out and conquer the rain and misty dinginess by sheer
force of beauty, sheer strength of character. He turns his head--his neck
forms a fine curve, his face is full of intelligence, in spite of the
half dim light and the driving rain, of the thick atmosphere, and the
black hollow of the covered van behind, his head and neck stand out, just
as in old portraits the face is still bright, though surrounded with
crusted varnish. It would be a glory to any man to paint him. Drive on.

How strange the dim, uncertain faces of the crowd, half-seen, seem in the
hurry and rain; faces held downwards and muffled by the darkness--not
quite human in their eager and intensely concentrated haste. No one
thinks of or notices another--on, on--splash, shove, and scramble; an
intense selfishness, so selfish as not to be selfish, if that can be
understood, so absorbed as to be past observing that any one lives but
themselves. Human beings reduced to mere hurrying machines, worked by
wind and rain, and stern necessities of life; driven on; something very
hard and unhappy in the thought of this. They seem reduced to the
condition of the wooden cabs--the mere vehicles--pulled along by the
irresistible horse Circumstance. They shut their eyes mentally, wrap
themselves in the overcoat of indifference, and drive on, drive on. It is
time to get out at last. The 'bus stops on one side of the street, and
you have to cross to the other. Look up and down--lights are rushing each
way, but for the moment none are close. The gas-lamps shine in the puddles
of thick greasy water, and by their gleam you can guide yourself round
them. Cab coming! Surely he will give way a little and not force you into
that great puddle; no, he neither sees, nor cares, Drive on, drive on.
Qick! the shafts! Step in the puddle and save your life!




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