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Title: The Life of the Fields

Author: Richard Jefferies

Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6164]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on November 20, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS ***




This eBook was produced by Malcolm Farmer.



THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS


BY RICHARD JEFFERIES




My thanks are due to those editors who have so kindly permitted me to
reprint the following pages:--"The Field-Play" appeared in _Time_; "Bits
of Oak Bark" and "The Pageant of Summer" in _Longman's Magazine_; "Meadow
Thoughts" and "Mind under Water" in _The Graphic_; "Clematis Lane,"
"Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky, and Down," "January in the Sussex
Woods," and "By the Exe" in _The Standard_; "Notes on Landscape
Painting," in _The Magazine of Art_; "Village Miners," in _The Gentleman's
Magazine_; "Nature and the Gamekeeper," "The Sacrifice to Trout," "The
Hovering of the Kestrel," and "Birds Climbing the Air," in _The St.
James's Gazette_; "Sport and Science," in _The National Review_; "The
Water-Colley," in _The Manchester Guardian_; "Country Literature,"
"Sunlight in a London Square," "Venice in the East End," "The Pigeons at
the British Museum," and "The Plainest City in Europe," in _The Pall Mall
Gazette_.

                      RICHARD JEFFERIES




CONTENTS



 THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER

 THE FIELD PLAY:
  I.  UPTILL-A-THORN
  II. RURAL DYNAMITE

 BITS OF OAK BARK:
  I.  THE ACORN-GATHERER
  II. THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY
  III. A ROMAN BROOK

 MEADOW THOUGHTS

 CLEMATIS LANE

 NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON

 SEA, SKY, AND DOWN

 JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOODS

 BY THE EXE

 THE WATER-COLLEY

 NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING

 VILLAGE MINERS

 MIND UNDER WATER

 SPORT AND SCIENCE

 NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER

 THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT

 THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL

 BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR

 COUNTRY LITERATURE:
  I.  THE AWAKENING.
  II. SCARCITY OF BOOKS
  III. THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING
  IV. PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION

 SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE

 VENICE IN THE EAST END.

 THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

 THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE




THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER

I



Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch,
told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the
hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like
summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they
were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate
scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass or
leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in
the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and
freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had
drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the
air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes--the common
rushes--were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses
growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs
were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass,
and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big
as a gun-barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound,
their tiers of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a
sturdy growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white
flower, which blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank.
But the "gix," or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and
would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man.
Trees they were to the lesser birds, not even bending if perched on; but
though so stout, the birds did not place their nests on or against them.
Something in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not
quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent.
Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against
or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain
supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the
ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was
wrapped and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it
would have needed a ladder to help any one look over.

It was between the may and the June roses. The may-bloom had fallen, and
among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed
the redwings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and
towering while there was a thorn, or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green
willow to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The buds
were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose.

As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible
portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so
the air lingering among the woods and hedges--green waves and
billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched hawthorn
leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval willows; from
vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed from the waving
grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was borne along and
breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds,
the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It was life to
breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went
up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the
Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer--to the
broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to the
highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the
Primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but cold and frozen
crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the
earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the
solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things
leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living things are
coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the
immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallised--press ponderously
on the thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to feed life--to feed
the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to feed the
swallows above, and us that wander beneath them. So much greater is this
ween and common rush than all the Alps.

Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he passes;
did he pause, the light would he apparent through their texture. On the
wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is
a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the
minute filaments on a swallow's quill, more delicate than the pollen of a
flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is
resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often consciously
recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the
earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of
life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees the
perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the wings that by-and-by
shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of
clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of
summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and
petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the
oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly--they are one and all a sign
and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope
becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on
every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for
us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you and me,
now, but for our race, who will ultimately use this magical secret for
their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough to give them the life of the
fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that
ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky,
shall become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take
from all their beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is
to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the glass I see
that every line in my face means pessimism; but in spite of my face--that
is my experience--I remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has
etched thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast the
original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over us with little
ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not look at ourselves
but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field.
He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of man.
Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind.

The long grass flowing towards the hedge has reared in a wave against it.
Along the hedge it is higher and greener, and rustles into the very
bushes. There is a mark only now where the footpath was; it passed close
to the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in the sorrel
and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the path, the grass there
cannot send its tops so high; it has left a winding crease. By the hedge
here stands a moss-grown willow, and its slender branches extend over the
sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes; then the ground
gently rises, and an ancient pollard ash, hollow and black inside, guards
an open gateway like a low tower. The different tone of green shows that
the hedge is there of nut-trees; but one great hawthorn spreads out in a
semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet more verdant in the still pool
(as it were) under it. Next a corner, more oaks, and a chestnut in bloom.
Returning to-this spot an old apple tree stands right out in the meadow
like an island. There seemed just now the tiniest twinkle of movement by
the rushes, but it was lost among the hedge parsley. Among the grey
leaves of the willow there is another flit of motion; and visible now
against the sky there is a little brown bird, not to be distinguished at
the moment from the many other little brown birds that are known to be
about. He got up into the willow from the hedge parsley somehow, without
being seen to climb or fly. Suddenly he crosses to the tops of the
hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into the air a yard or two,
his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as
if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at that height.
He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone
into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond. It is a
whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles. Presently he
will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a minute or two;
the pair of them are so fond of each other's affectionate company they
cannot remain apart.

Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at
hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a
second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover.
Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now
and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart.
They are fly-fishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips
and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird
slips up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut
tree. But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with
intervals. The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight. All
the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most
of them on the mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses,
protected too by a roof of brambles. The nests that still have eggs are
not, like the nests of the early days of April, easily found; they are
deep down in the tangled herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far inside
the thorny thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad.
Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in a wood;
they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may search in vain
till the mowers come.

Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching show
where a doe has been preparing for a litter. Some well-trodden runs lead
from mound to mound; they are sandy near the hedge where the particles
have been carried out adhering to the rabbits' feet and fur. A crow rises
lazily from the upper end of the field, and perches in the chestnut. His
presence, too, was unsuspected. He is there by far too frequently. At
this season the crows are always in the mowing-grass, searching about,
stalking in winding tracks from furrow to furrow, picking up an egg here
and a foolish fledgling that has wandered from the mound yonder. Very
likely there may be a moorhen or two slipping about under cover of the
long grass; thus hidden, they can leave the shelter of the flags and
wander a distance from the brook. So that beneath the surface of the
grass and under the screen of the leaves there are ten times more birds
than are seen.

Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only
heard in summer. Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I
become aware of a sound in the very air. It is not the midsummer hum
which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the
cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but
just tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and
rustle they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder it
overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot, define it,
except by calling the hours of winter to mind--they are silent; you hear
a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the
hoar-frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without
sound in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere--in the passing
breeze, in the hedge, in the broad branching trees, in the grass as it
swings; all the myriad particles that together make the summer are in
motion. The sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass
and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square
miles of grass blades--for they would cover acres and square miles if
reckoned edge to edge--are drawing their strength from the atmosphere.
Exceedingly minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may
give them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the
ear. Besides the quivering leaf, the swinging grass, the fluttering
bird's wing, and the thousand oval membranes which innumerable insects
whirl about, a faint resonance seems to come from the very earth itself.
The fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the
strung harp of earth. It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet
unheard, which brings the mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful
instrument of nature.

By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass is less tall and
admits the heat direct to the ground; here there are blue flowers--bluer
than the wings of my favourite butterflies--with white centres--the
lovely bird's-eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and
rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked. The ploughboys
know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those who linger in
fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass,
imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these
growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. From this island I
look down into the depth of the grasses. Red sorrel spires--deep drinkers
of reddest sun wine--stand the boldest, and in their numbers threaten the
buttercups. To these in the distance they give the gipsy-gold tint--the
reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It will show even on
a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open
marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc, such fingers of
rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads
of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from
Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to a
point--the foxtails--some are hard and cylindrical; others, avoiding the
club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with fruit of seed at the
ends, which tremble as the air goes by. Their stalks are ripening and
becoming of the colour of hay while yet the long blades remain green.

Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by
foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become
monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of
veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of flowers,
and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm ranks with
elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times reduplicated,
their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on
the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we
ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years! There seems always
a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen through,
a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give us
something. Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on for
the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or up
to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The hive
bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle
their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a
hedge. They like an open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the
sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep
under grass.




II



It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the
mowing-grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and
takes wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar
buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself as he
goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in glass receives
his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the beams of the sun
are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort;
the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for the
flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm
descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and
tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron
nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn; but
no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall
(in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape
the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering
nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out
and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far
inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest
is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound; a mere tunnel
beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the
fern grows by, red mice rustle past.

It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the
treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the
lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of
a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree
fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the
wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a
fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the
fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted fibres, remains
uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like a cave in the
rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is the
sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there will
be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the
field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and
humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart
at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the
brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of
being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky.
The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground and the livid flame
to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in the
evening.

Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick larches at the edge of
plantations. They are no shelter, but conceal one perfectly. The
wood-pigeons come home to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have
permanent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home to the wood.
Pheasants crow, but not from fear--from defiance, in fear they scream.
The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky. The rabbits
quietly feed on out in the field between the thistles and rushes that so
often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their favourite
places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the hollows of
the wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed whatever, but
then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal of noise; but
the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as savage as it
will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more senseless than a
pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day, though the printing press
has set a foot on every threshold, numbers bow the knee when they hear
the roar the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are the doves, the
squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of the field.
Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face
death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so
content with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by
reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what we so
thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a nearly perfect
life.

The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing is
shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the rim of a
wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against it while
feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or smoothed
down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place. There are no
crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught anywhere have been
carried away by birds for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar,
hard as iron. A hundred times the mowing-grass has grown up around it,
the birds have built their nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the
acorns dropped from the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by
artificial hours or by the seasons, but it is longer still in another
way. The greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I came
out, and all the time has been happily talking to his love. He has left
the hawthorn indeed, but only for a minute or two, to fetch a few seeds,
and comes back each time more full of song-talk than ever. He notes no
slow movement of the oak's shadow on the grass; it is nothing to him and
his lady dear that the sun, as seen from his nest, is crossing from one
great bough of the oak to another. The dew even in the deepest and most
tangled grass has long since been dried, and some of the flowers that
close at noon will shortly fold their petals. The morning airs, which
breathe so sweetly, come less and less frequently as the heat increases.
Vanishing from the sky, the last fragments of cloud have left an
untarnished azure. Many times the bees have returned to their hives, and
thus the index of the day advances. It is nothing to the green-finches;
all their thoughts are in their song-talk. The sunny moment is to them
all in all. So deeply are they rapt in it that they do not know whether
it is a moment or a year. There is no clock for feeling, for joy, for
love.

And with all their motions and stepping from bough to bough, they are not
restless; they have so much time, you see. So, too, the whitethroat in
the wild parsley; so, too, the thrush that just now peered out and partly
fluttered his wings as he stood to look. A butterfly comes and stays on a
leaf--a leaf much warmed by the sun--and shuts his wings. In a minute he
opens them, shuts them again, half wheels round, and by-and-by--just when
he chooses, and not before--floats away. The flowers open, and remain
open for hours, to the sun. Hastelessness is the only word one can make
up to describe it; there is much rest, but no haste. Each moment, as with
the greenfinches, is so full of life that it seems so long and so
sufficient in itself. Not only the days, but life itself lengthens in
summer. I would spread abroad my arms and gather more of it to me, could
I do so.

All the procession of living and growing things passes. The grass stands
up taller and still taller, the sheaths open, and the stalk arises, the
pollen clings till the breeze sweeps it. The bees rush past, and the
resolute wasps; the humble-bees, whose weight swings them along. About
the oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm; and the fern-owls at dusk,
and the blackbirds and jays by day, cannot reduce their legions while
they last. Yellow butterflies, and white, broad red admirals, and sweet
blues; think of the kingdom of flowers which is theirs! Heavy moths
burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and gold flies: gnats,
like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if
you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze
beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of
water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to
elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into
the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on
the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a
starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond.
Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed
wings, and linnets happy with their young.

Golden dandelion discs--gold and orange--of a hue more beautiful, I
think, than the higher and more visible buttercup. A blackbird, gleaming,
so black is he, splashing in the runlet of water across the gateway. A
ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself as you might draw a stroke with
a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away above the
hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so green as to be thick with
its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady hazel boughs. White
meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black-flowered sedges. You
must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout
willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like
underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black
moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has dived
under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the duckweed.
Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey stands at the very edge; the
sandpipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by the underwood
the prickly and repellent brambles will presently present us with fruit.
For the squirrels the nuts are forming, green beechmast is there--green
wedges under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots, like bark rolled
up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple vetches along the mounds, yellow
lotus where the grass is shorter, and orchis succeeds to orchis. As I
write them, so these things come--not set in gradation, but like the
broadcast flowers in the mowing-grass.

Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and the sweet
lady's-bedstraw, set as it were in the midst of a little thorn-bush. The
broad repetition of the yellow clover is not to be written; acre upon
acre, and not one spot of green, as if all the green had been planed
away, leaving only the flowers to which the bees come by the thousand
from far and near. But one white campion stands in the midst of the lake
of yellow. The field is scented as though a hundred hives of honey had
been emptied on it. Along the mound by it the bluebells are seeding, the
hedge has been cut and the ground is strewn with twigs. Among those
seeding bluebells and dry twigs and mosses I think a titlark has his
nest, as he stays all day there and in the oak over. The pale clear
yellow of charlock, sharp and clear, promises the finches bushels of seed
for their young. Under the scarlet of the poppies the larks run, and then
for change of colour soar into the blue. Creamy honeysuckle on the hedge
around the cornfield, buds of wild rose everywhere, but no sweet petal
yet. Yonder, where the wheat can climb no higher up the slope, are the
purple heath-bells, thyme and flitting stonechats.

The lone barn shut off by acres of barley is noisy with sparrows. It is
their city, and there is a nest in every crevice, almost under every
tile. Sometimes the partridges run between the ricks, and when the bats
come out of the roof, leverets play in the waggon-track. At even a
fern-owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue. On
the narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is worn in
chalk, the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the
atmosphere focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so
does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very sun
of Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the coombe,
and will only let the spring moisten a yard or two around it; but there a
few rushes have sprung, and in the water itself brooklime with blue
flowers grows so thickly that nothing but a bird could find space to
drink. So down again from this sun of Spain to woody coverts where the
wild hops are blocking every avenue, and green-flowered bryony would fain
climb to the trees; where grey-flecked ivy winds spirally about the red
rugged bark of pines, where burdocks fight for the footpath, and
teazle-heads look over the low hedges. Brake-fern rises five feet high;
in some way woodpeckers are associated with brake, and there seem more of
them where it flourishes. Ifyou count the depth and strength of its roots
in the loamy sand, add the thickness of its flattened stem, and the width
of its branching fronds, you may say that it comes near to be a little
tree. Beneath where the ponds are bushy mare's-tails grow, and on the
moist banks jointed pewterwort; some of the broad bronze leaves of
water-weeds seem to try and conquer the pond and cover it so firmly that
a wagtail may run on them. A white butterfly follows along the
waggon-road, the pheasants slip away as quietly as the butterfly flies,
but a jay screeches loudly and flutters in high rage to see us. Under an
ancient garden wall among matted bines of trumpet convolvulus, there is a
hedge-sparrow's nest overhung with ivy on which even now the last black
berries cling.

There are minute white flowers on the top of the wall, out of reach, and
lichen grows against it dried by the sun till it looks ready to crumble.
By the gateway grows a thick bunch of meadow geranium, soon to flower;
over the gate is the dusty highway road, quiet but dusty, dotted with the
innumerable footmarks of a flock of sheep that has passed. The sound of
their bleating still comes back, and the bees driven up by their feet
have hardly had time to settle again on the white clover beginning to
flower on the short roadside sward. All the hawthorn leaves and briar and
bramble, the honeysuckle, too, is gritty with the dust that has been
scattered upon it. But see--can it be? Stretch a hand high, quick, and
reach it down; the first, the sweetest, the dearest rose of June. Not yet
expected, for the time is between the may and the roses, least of all
here in the hot and dusty highway; but it is found--the first rose of
June.

Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the mind's glance
goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times When
perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were
full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst of their
mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every
flower; as the sunshine was reflected. from them so the feeling in the
heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy summer haze love gave a deep
enchantment, the colours were fairer, the blue more lovely in the lucid
sky. Each leaf finer, and the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A
sweet breath on the air, a soft warm hand in the touch of the sunshine, a
glance in the gleam of the rippled waters, a whisper in the dance of the
shadows. The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and they were buoyant on
the mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer rough, each slender
flower beneath them again refined. There was a presence everywhere though
unseen, on the open hills, and not shut out under the dark pines. Dear
were the June roses then because for another gathered. Yet even dearer
now with so many years as it were upon the petals; all the days that have
been before, all the heart-throbs, all our hopes lie in this opened bud.
Let not the eyes grow dim, look not back but forward; the soul must
uphold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make the heart grow larger
as we become older, as the spreading oak gives more shelter. That we
could but take to the soul some of the greatness and the beauty of the
summer!

Still the pageant moves. The song-talk of the finches rises and sinks
like the tinkle of a waterfall. The greenfinches have been by me all the
while. A bullfinch pipes now and then further up the hedge where the
brambles and thorns are thickest. Boldest of birds to look at, he is
always in hiding. The shrill tone of a goldfinch came just now from the
ash branches, but he has gone on. Every four or five minutes a chaffinch
sings close by, and another fills the interval near the gateway. There
are linnets somewhere, but I cannot from the old apple tree fix their
exact place. Thrushes have sung and ceased; they will begin again in ten
minutes. The blackbirds do not cease; the note tittered by a blackbird in
the oak yonder before it can drop is taken up by a second near the top of
the field, and ere it falls is caught by a third on the left-hand side.
From one of the topmost boughs of an elm there fell the song of a willow
warbler for awhile; one of the least of birds, he often seeks the highest
branches of the highest tree.

A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch in the gateway, where he
has been perched and singing a full hour. Presently he will commence
again, and as the sun declines will sing him to the horizon, and then
again sing till nearly dusk. The yellowhammer is almost the longest of
all the singers; he sits and sits and has no inclination to move. In the
spring he sings, in the summer he sings, and he continues when the last
sheaves are being carried from the wheat field. The redstart yonder has
given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at
short intervals and chatters, the shrike calls sharp and determined,
faint but shrill calls descend from the swifts in the air These descend,
but the twittering notes of the swallows do not reach so far--they are
too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook, and now fainter from a
greater distance. That the titlarks are singing I know, but not within
hearing from here; a dove, though, is audible, and a chiffchaff has twice
passed. Afar beyond the oaks at the top of the field dark specks ascend
from time to time, and after moving in wide circles for awhile descend
again to the corn. These must be larks; but their notes are not powerful
enough to reach me, though they would were it not for the song in the
hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, and the ceaseless "crake, crake"
of landrails. There are at least two landrails in the mowing-grass; one
of them just now seemed coming straight towards the apple tree, and I
expected in a minute to see the grass move, when the bird turned aside
and entered the tufts and wild parsley by the hedge. Thence the call has
come without a moment's pause, "crake, crake," till the thick hedge seems
filled with it. Tits have visited the apple tree over my head, a wren has
sung in the willow, or rather on a dead branch projecting lower down than
the leafy boughs, and a robin across under the elms in the opposite
hedge. Elms are a favourite tree of robins--not the upper branches, but
those that grow down the trunk, and are the first to have leaves in
spring.

The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually, but I think the
blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields. Before one can
finish another begins, like the summer ripples succeeding behind each
other, so that the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now here,
now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant copse,
where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand. Like a
great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious
that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes,
and carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it pleases him to
sing again. Without the blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness of the
green fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer. Without the
violet all the bluebells and cowslips could not make a spring, and
without the blackbird. even the nightingale would be but half welcome. It
is not yet noon, these songs have been ceaseless since dawn; this
evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun down, when the moon
rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will call, and the
grasshopper lark, the landrail's "crake, crake" will echo from the mound,
a warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at the darkest of
the summer night the swallows will hardly sleep in their nests. As the
morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will rise the larks
singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and the swallows
will start again on their tireless journey. So that the songs of the
summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which plays
day and night.

I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the
long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I
seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the
south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the
immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and
blackbird; from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something
of the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird's melody one
note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me,
though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have
collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some,
at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never stay
long enough--whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward under the
sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills. Hour after
hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never long
enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary. The
exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new
thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty
are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay
among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. Let
the shadow advance upon the dial-I can watch it with equanimity while it
is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow is _not_ there, when
the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible
shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can see the shadow of
the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface of the grass, it
is mine. These are the only hours that are not wasted--these hours that
absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else
is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers and
waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind? It does;
much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and woman filled with
a godlike sense of the violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought,
calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the unknown. To be
beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If
I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it.




THE FIELD-PLAY

I

UPTILL-A-THORN

 "Save the nightingale alone;
 She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
 Lean'd her breast uptill a thorn."
         --_Passionate Pilgrim._

She pinned her torn dress with a thorn torn from the bushes through which
she had scrambled to the hay-field. The gap from the lane was narrow,
made more narrow by the rapid growth of summer; her rake caught in an
ash-spray, and in releasing it she "ranted" the bosom of her print dress.
So soon as she had got through she dropped her rake on the hay, searched
for a long, nail-like thorn, and thrust it through, for the good-looking,
careless hussy never had any provision of pins about her. Then, taking a
June rose which pricked her finger, she put the flower by the "rant", or
tear, and went to join the rest of the hay-makers. The blood welled up
out of the scratch in the finger more freely than would have been
supposed from so small a place. She put her lips to it to suck it away,
as folk do in all quarters of the earth yet discovered, being one of
those instinctive things which come without teaching. A red dot of blood
stained her soft white cheek, for, in brushing back her hair with her
hand, she forgot the wounded finger. With red blood on her face, a thorn
and a rose in her bosom, and a hurt on her hand, she reached the chorus
of rakers.

The farmer and the sun are the leading actors, and the hay-makers are the
chorus, who bear the burden of the play. Marching, each a step behind the
other, and yet in a row, they presented a slanting front, and so crossed
the field, turning the "wallows." At the hedge she took her place, the
last in the row. There were five men and eight women; all flouted her.
The men teased her for being late again at work; she said it was so far
to come. The women jeered at her for tearing her dress--she couldn't get
through a "thornin'" hedge right. There was only one thing she could do,
and that was to "make a vool of zum veller" (make a fool of some fellow).
Dolly did not take much notice, except that her nervous temperament
showed slight excitement in the manner she used her rake, now turning the
hay quickly, now missing altogether, then catching the teeth of the rake
in the buttercup-runners. The women did not fail to tell her how awkward
she was. By-and-by Dolly bounced forward, and, with a flush on her cheek,
took the place next to the men. They teased her too, you see, but there
was no spiteful malice in their tongues. There are some natures which,
naturally meek, if much condemned, defy that condemnation, and willingly
give it ground of justification by open guilt. The women accused her of
too free a carriage with the men; she replied by seeking their company in
the broad glare of the summer day. They laughed loudly, joked, but
welcomed her; they chatted with her gaily; they compelled her to sip from
their ale as they paused by the hedge. By noon there was a high colour on
her cheeks; the sun, the exercise, the badinage had brought it up.

So fair a complexion could not brown even in summer, exposed to the
utmost heat. The beams indeed did heighten the hue of her cheeks a
little, but it did not shade to brown. Her chin and neck were wholly
untanned, white and soft, and the blue veins roamed at their will. Lips
red, a little full perhaps; teeth slightly prominent but white and gleamy
as she smiled. Dark brown hair in no great abundance, always slipping out
of its confinement and straggling, now on her forehead, and now on her
shoulders, like wandering bines of bryony. The softest of brown eyes
under long eyelashes; eyes that seemed to see everything in its gentlest
aspect, that could see no harm anywhere. A ready smile on the face, and a
smile in the form. Her shape yielded so easily at each movement that it
seemed to smile as she walked. Her nose was the least pleasing
feature--not delicate enough to fit with the complexion, and distinctly
upturned, though not offensively. But it was not noticed; no one saw
anything beyond the laughing lips, the laughing shape, the eyes that
melted so near to tears. The torn dress, the straggling hair, the
tattered shoes, the unmended stocking, the straw hat split, the mingled
poverty and carelessness--perhaps rather dreaminess--disappeared when
once you had met the full untroubled gaze of those beautiful eyes.
Untroubled, that is, with any ulterior thought of evil or cunning; they
were as open as the day, the day which you can make your own for evil or
good. So, too, like the day, was she ready to the making.

No stability; now fast in motion; now slow; now by fits and starts;
washing her face to-day, her hands to-morrow. Never going straight, even
along the road; talking with the waggoner, helping a child to pick
watercress, patting the shepherd's dog, finding a flower, and late every
morning at the hay-field. It was so far to come, she said; no doubt it
was, if these stoppings and doublings were counted in. No character
whatever, no more than the wind; she was like a well-hung gate swinging
to a touch; like water yielding to let a reed sway; like a singing-flame
rising and falling to a word, and even to an altered tone of voice. A
word pushed her this way; aword pushed her that. Always yielding, sweet,
and gentle. Is not this the most seductive of all characters in women?

Had they left her alone, would it have been any different? Those bitter,
coarse, feminine tongues which gave her the name of evil, and so led her
to openly announce that, as she had the name, she would carry on the
game. That is an old country saying, "Bear the name, carry the game." If
you have the name of a poacher, then poach; you will be no worse off and
you will have the pleasure of the poaching. It is a serious matter,
indeed, to give any one a bad name, more especially a sensitive, nervous,
beautiful girl.

Under the shady oaks at luncheon the men all petted her and flattered her
in their rude way, which, rude as it was, had the advantage of admitting
of no mistake. Two or three more men strolled up from other fields,
luncheon in hand and eating as they came, merely to chat with her. One
was a mower--a powerful fellow, big boned, big everywhere, and heavy
fisted; his chest had been open since four o'clock that morning to the
sun, and was tanned like his face. He took her in his mighty arms and
kissed her before them all; not one dared move, for the weight of that
bone-smashing fist was known. Big Mat drank, as all strong men do; he
fought; beyond that there was nothing against him. He worked hard, and
farmers are only too glad of a man who will work. He was rather a
favourite with the master, and trusted. He kissed her twice, and then
went back to his work of mowing, which needs more strength than any other
country labour--a mower is to a man what a dray-horse is to a horse.

They lingered long over the luncheon under the shady oaks, with the great
blue tile of the sky overhead, and the sweet scent of hay around them.
They lingered so long, that young Mr. Andrew came to start them again,
and found Dolly's cheeks all aglow. The heat and the laughter had warmed
them; her cheeks burned, in contrast to her white, pure forehead--for her
hat was off--and to the cool shade of the trees. She lingered yet a
little longer chatting with Mr. Andrew--lingered a full half-hour--and
when they parted, she had given him a rose from the hedge. Young Mr.
Andrew was but half a farmer's son; he was destined for a merchant's
office in town; he had been educated for it, and was only awaiting the
promised opening. He was young, but no yokel; too knowing of town cunning
and selfish hardness to entangle himself. Yet those soft brown eyes, that
laughing shape; Andrew was very young and so was she, and the summer sun
burned warm.

The blackbirds whistled the day away, and the swallows sought their nests
under the eaves. The curved moon hung on the sky as the hunter's horn on
the wall. Timid Wat--the hare--came ambling along the lane, and almost
ran against two lovers in a recess of the bushes by an elm. Andrew,
Andrew! these lips are too sweet for you; get you to your desk--that
smiling shape, those shaded, soft brown eyes, let them alone. Be
generous--do not awaken hopes you can never, never fulfil. The new-mown
hay is scented yet more sweetly in the evening--of a summer's eve it is
always too soon to go home.

The blackbirds whistled again, big Mat slew the grass from the rising to
the going down of the sun--moon-daisies, sorrel, and buttercups lay in
rows of swathe as he mowed. I wonder whether the man ever thought, as he
reposed at noontide on a couch of grass under the hedge? Did he think
that those immense muscles, that broad, rough-hewn plank of a chest of
his, those vast bones encased in sinewy limbs--being flesh in its
fulness--ought to have more of this earth than mere common men, and still
more than thin-faced people--mere people, not men--in black coats? Did he
dimly claim the rights of strength in his mind, and arrogate to himself
the prerogatives of arbitrary kings? Who knows what big processes of
reasoning, dim and big, passed through his mind in the summer days? Did
he conclude he had a right to take what others only asked or worked for?

The sweet scent of the new-mown hay disappeared, the hay became whiter,
the ricks rose higher, and were topped and finished. Hourly the year grew
drier and sultry, as the time of wheat-harvest approached. Sap of spring
had dried away; dry stalk of high summer remained, browned with heat. Mr.
Andrew (in the country the son is always called by his Christian name,
with the prefix Master or Mr.) had been sent for to London to fill the
promised lucrative berth. The reapers were in the corn--Dolly tying up;
big Mat slashing at the yellow stalks. Why the man worked so hard no one
could imagine, unless it was for pure physical pleasure of using those
great muscles. Unless, indeed, a fire, as it were, was burning in his
mind, and drove him to labour to smother it, as they smother fires by
beating them. Dolly was happier than ever--the gayest of the gay. She
sang, she laughed, her white, gleaming teeth shone in the sunshine; it
was as if she had some secret which enabled her to defy the taunts and
cruel, shameless words hurled at her, like clods of earth, by the other
women. Gay she was, as the brilliant poppies who, having the sun as their
own, cared for nothing else.

Till suddenly, just before the close of harvest, Dolly and Mat were
missing from the field. Of course their absence was slanderously
connected, but there was no known ground for it. Big Mat was found
intoxicated at the tavern, from which he never moved for a fortnight,
spending in one long drain of drink the lump of money his mighty arms had
torn from the sun in the burning hours of work. Dolly was ill at home;
sometimes in her room, sometimes downstairs; but ill, shaky and
weak--ague they called it. There were dark circles round her eyes, her
chin drooped to her breast; she wrapped herself in a shawl in all the
heat. It was some time before even the necessity of working brought her
forth again, and then her manner was hurried and furtive; she would begin
trembling all of a minute, and her eyes filled quickly.

By degrees the autumn advanced, and the rooks followed the ploughman.
Dolly gradually recovered something of her physical buoyancy; her former
light-heartedness never returned. Sometimes an incident would cause a
flash of the old gaiety, only for her to sink back into subdued
quietness. The change was most noticeable in her eyes; soft and tender
still, brown and velvety, there was a deep sadness in them--the longer
she looked at you, the more it was visible. They seemed as if her spirit
had suffered some great wrong; too great for redress, and that could only
be borne in silence.

How beautiful are beautiful eyes! Not from one aspect only, as a picture
is, where the light falls rightly on it--the painter's point of
view--they vary to every and any aspect. The orb rolls to meet the
changing circumstance, and is adjusted to all. But a little inquiry into
the mechanism of the eyes will indicate how wondrously they are formed.
Science has dispelled many illusions, broken many dreams; but here, in
the investigation of the eye, it has added to our marvelling interest.
The eye is still like the work of a magician: it is physically divine.
Besides the liquid flesh which delights the beholder, there is then the
retina, the mysterious nerve which receives a thousand pictures on one
surface and confuses none; and further, the mystery of the brain, which
reproduces them at will, twenty years, yes threescore years and ten,
afterwards. Perhaps of all physical things, the eye is most beautiful,
most divine.

Her eyes were still beautiful, but subdued and full of a great wrong.
What that wrong was became apparent in the course of time. Dolly had to
live with Mat, and, unhappily, not as his wife. Next harvest there was a
child wrapped in a red shawl with her in the field, placed under the
shocks while she worked. Her brother Bill talked and threatened--of what
avail was it? The law gave no redress, and among men in these things,
force is master still. There were none who could meet big Mat in fight.

Something seemed to burn in Mat like fire. Now he worked, and now he
drank, but the drink which would have killed another did him no injury.
He grew and flourished upon it, more bone, more muscle, more of the
savage nature of original man. But there was something within on fire.
Was he not satisfied even yet? Did he arrogate yet further prerogatives
of kings?--prerogatives which even kings claim no longer. One day, while
in drink, his heavy fist descended--he forgot his might; he did not check
it, like Ulysses in the battle with Irus--and Dolly fell.

When they lifted her up, one eye was gone.

It was utterly put out, organically destroyed; no skill, no money, no
loving care could restore it. The soft, brown velvet, the laugh, the tear
gone for ever. The divine eye was broken--battered as a stone might be.
The exquisite structure which reflected the trees and flowers, and took
to itself the colour of the summer sky, was shapeless.

In the second year, Mr. Andrew came down, and one day met her in the
village. He did not know her. The stoop, the dress which clothed, but
responded to no curve, the sunken breast, and the sightless eye, how
should he recognise these? This ragged, plain, this ugly, repellent
creature--he did not know her. She spoke; Mr. Andrew hastily fumbled in
his pocket, fetched out half-a-crown, gave it, and passed on quickly. How
fortunate that he had not entangled himself!

Meantime, Mat drank and worked harder than ever, and became more morose,
so that no one dared cross him, yet as a worker he was trusted by the
farmer. Whatever it was, the fire in him burned deeper, and to the very
quick. The poppies came and went once more, the harvest moon rose yellow
and ruddy, all the joy of the year proceeded, but Dolly was like a violet
over which a waggon-wheel had rolled. The thorn had gone deep into her
bosom.


II

RURAL DYNAMITE

In the cold North men eat bread of fir-bark; in our own fields the mouse,
if pressed for food in winter, will gnaw the bark of sapling trees. Frost
sharpens the teeth like a file, and hunger is keener than frost. If any
one used to more fertile scenes had walked across the barren meads Mr.
Roberts rented as the summer declined, he would have said that a living
could only be gained from them as the mouse gains it in frost-time. By
sharp-set nibbling and paring; by the keenest frost-bitten meanness of
living; by scraping a little bit here, and saving another trifle yonder,
a farmer might possibly get through the year. At the end of each year he
would be rather worse off than before, descending a step annually. He
must nibble like a frost-driven mouse to merely exist. So poor was the
soil, that the clay came to the surface, and in wet weather a slip of the
foot exposed it--the heel cut through the veneer of turf into the cold,
dead, moist clay. Nothing grew but rushes. Every time a horse moved over
the marshy land his hoof left deep holes which never again filled up, but
remained the year through, now puddles, full of rain water, and now dry
holes. The rain made the ground a swamp; the sun cracked it as it does
paint. Who could pay rent for such a place?--for rushes, flags, and
water.

Yet it was said, with whisper and nod, that the tenant, Mr. Roberts, was
a warm man as warm men go after several years of bad seasons, falling
prices, and troubles of all kinds. For one thing, he hopped, and it is
noted among country folk, that, if a man hops, he generally accumulates
money. Mr. Roberts hopped, or rather dragged his legs from rheumatics
contracted in thirty years' hardest of hard labour on that thankless
farm. Never did any man labour so continually as he, from the earliest
winter dawn when the blackbird, with puffed feathers, still tried to
slumber in the thornbush, but could not for cold, on till the latest
summer eve, after the white barn owl had passed round the fir copse. Both
with his hands, and with his eyes, now working, now watching, the man
ceased not, and such was his dogged pertinacity that, like the mouse, he
won a living. He did more, he saved. At what price? At the price of a
fireless life: I mean without cheer, by denial of everything which
renders human life superior to that of the rabbit in his burrow. No wife,
no children, no niece, or any woman to see to his comforts; no comfort
and no pleasure; a bare house and rheumatism. Bill, his principal
labourer, Dolly's brother, slept with him in the same bed, master and
man, a custom common in old times, long since generally disused.

Yet Mr. Roberts was not without some humanism, if such a word may be
used; certainly he never gave away a penny, but as certainly he cheated
no man. He was upright in conduct, and not unpleasant in manner. He could
not have been utterly crabbed for this one labourer, Bill, to stay with
him five-and-twenty years. This was the six-and-twentieth year they had
dwelt there together in the gaunt, grey, lonely house, with woods around
them, isolated from the world, and without a hearth. A hearth is no
hearth unless a woman sit by it. This six-and-twentieth year, the season
then just ended, had been the worst of the series; rain had spoiled the
hay, increased the payment of wages by lengthening the time of
hay-making; ruin, he declared, stared him in the face; he supposed at
last he must leave the tenancy. And now the harvest was done, the ricks
thatched with flags from the marsh (to save straw), the partridges were
dispersed, the sportsmen having broken up the coveys, the black swifts
had departed--they built every year in the grey stone slates on the
lonely house--and nothing was left to be done but to tend the cattle
morning and evening, to reflect on the losses, and to talk ceaselessly of
the new terror which hung over the whole district.

It was rick-burning. Probably, gentlemen in London, who "sit at home at
ease," imagine rick-burning a thing of the past, impossible since
insurance robbed the incendiary of his sting, unheard of and extinct.
Nothing of the kind. That it is not general is true, still to this day it
breaks out in places, and rages with vehemence, placing the countryside
under a reign of terror. The thing seems inexplicable, but it is a fact;
the burning of ricks and farm-sheds every now and then, in certain
localities, reaches the dimensions of a public disaster.

One night from the garret window, Mr. Roberts, and Bill, his man, counted
five fires visible at once. One was in full sight, not a mile distant,
two behind the wood, above which rose the red glow, the other two dimly
illumined the horizon on the left like a rising moon. While they watched
in the dark garret the rats scampered behind them, and a white barn owl
floated silently by. They counted up fourteen fires that had taken place
since the beginning of the month, and now there were five together. Mr.
Roberts did not sleep that night. Being so near the woods and preserves
it was part of the understanding that he should not keep a gun--he took a
stout staff, and went out to his hayricks, and there stayed till
daylight. By ten o'clock he was trudging into the town; his mind had been
half-crazed with anxiety for his ricks; he was not insured, he had never
insured, just to save the few shillings it cost, such was the nibbling by
which he lived. He had struggled hard and kept the secret to himself--of
the non-insurance--he foresaw that if known he should immediately suffer.
But at the town the insurance agent demurred to issue a policy. The
losses had been so heavy, there was no knowing how much farther the loss
might extend, for not the slightest trace of the incendiary had yet been
discovered, notwithstanding the reward offered, and this was a new
policy. Had it been to add to an old one, had Mr. Roberts insured in
previous years, it would have been different. He could not do it on his
own responsibility, he must communicate with the head office; most likely
they would do it, but he must have their authority. By return of post he
should know. Mr. Roberts trudged home again, with the misery of two more
nights confronting him; two more nights of exposure to the chance of
utter ruin. If those ricks were burned, the savings--the nibblings of his
life--were gone. This intense, frost-bitten economy, by which alone he
had been able to prosper, now threatened to overwhelm him with
destruction.

There is nothing that burns so resolutely as a hayrick; nothing that
catches fire so easily. Children are playing with matches; one holds the
ignited match till, it scorches the fingers, and then drops it. The
expiring flame touches three blades of dry grass, of hay fallen from the
rick, these flare immediately; the flame runs along like a train of
gun-powder, rushes up the side of the rick, singeing it as a horse's coat
is singed, takes the straw of the thatch which blackens into a hole, cuts
its way through, the draught lifts it up the slope of the thatch, and in
five minutes the rick is on fire irrecoverably. Unless beaten out at the
first start, it is certain to go on. A spark from a pipe, dropped from
the mouth of a sleeping man, will do it. Once well alight, and the
engines may come at full speed, one five miles, one eight, two ten; they
may pump the pond dry, and lay hose to the distant brook--it is in vain.
The spread of the flames may be arrested, but not all the water that can
be thrown will put out the rick. The outside of the rick where the water
strikes it turns black, and dense smoke arises, but the inside core
continues to burn till the last piece is charred. All that can be done is
to hastily cut away that side of the rick--if any remains--yet untouched,
and carry it bodily away. A hayrick will burn for hours, one huge mass of
concentrated, glowing, solid fire, not much flame, but glowing coals, so
that the farmer may fully understand, may watch and study and fully
comprehend the extent of his loss. It burns itself from a square to a
dome, and the red dome grows gradually smaller till its lowest layer of
ashes strews the ground. It burns itself as it were in blocks: the rick
was really homogeneous; it looks while aglow as if it had been
constructed of large bricks or blocks of hay. These now blackened blocks
dry and crumble one by one till the dome sinks. Under foot the earth is
heated, so intense is the fire; no one can approach, even on the windward
side, within a pole's length. A widening stream of dense white smoke
flows away upwards, flecked with great sparks, blackening the elms, and
carrying flakes of burning hay over outhouses, sheds, and farmsteads.
Thus from the clouds, as it seems, drops further destruction. Nothing in
the line of the wind is safe. Fine impalpable ashes drift and fall like
rain half a mile away. Sometimes they remain suspended in the air for
hours, and come down presently when the fire is out, like volcanic dust
drifting from the crater. This dust lies soft and silky on the hand. By
the burning rick, the air rushing to the furnace roars aloud, coming so
swiftly as to be cold; on one side intense heat, on the other cold wind.
The pump, pump, swing, swing of the manual engines; the quick, short pant
of the steam fire-engine; the stream and hiss of the water; shouts and
answers; gleaming brass helmets; frightened birds; crowds of white faces,
whose frames are in shadow; a red glow on the black, wet mud of the empty
pond; rosy light on the walls of the homestead, crossed with vast
magnified shadows; windows glistening; men dragging sail-like tarpaulins
and rick cloths to cover the sheds; constables upright and quiet, but
watchful, standing at intervals to keep order; if by day, the strangest
mixture of perfect calm and heated anxiety, the smoke bluish, the
floating flakes visible as black specks, the flames tawny, pigeons
fluttering round, cows grazing in idol-like indifference to human fears.
Ultimately, rows of flattened and roughly circular layers of blackened
ashes, whose traces remain for months.

This is dynamite in the hands of the village ruffian.

This hay, or wheat, or barley, not only represents money; it represents
the work of an entire year, the sunshine of a whole summer; it is the
outcome of man's thought and patient labour, and it is the food of the
helpless cattle. Besides the hay, there often go with it buildings,
implements, waggons, and occasionally horses are suffocated. Once now and
then the farmstead goes.

Now, has not the farmer, even if covered by insurance, good reason to
dread this horrible incendiarism? It is a blow at his moral existence as
well as at his pecuniary interests. Hardened indeed must be that heart
that could look at the old familiar scene, blackened, fire-spilt,
trodden, and blotted, without an inward desolation. Boxes and barrels of
merchandise in warehouses can be replaced, but money does not replace the
growth of nature.

Hence the brutality of it--the blow at a man's heart. His hay, his wheat,
his cattle, are to a farmer part of his life; coin will not replace them.
Nor does the incendiary care if the man himself, his house, home, and all
perish at the same time. It is dynamite in despite of insurance. The new
system of silos--burying the grass when cut at once in its green state,
in artificial caves--may much reduce the risk of fire if it comes into
general use.

These fire invasions almost always come in the form of an epidemic; not
one but three, five, ten, fifteen fires follow in quick succession.
Sometimes they last through an entire winter, though often known to take
place in summer, directly after harvest.

Rarely does detection happen; to this day half these incendiary fires are
never followed by punishment. Yet it is noted that they generally occur
within a certain radius; they are all within six, or seven, or eight
miles, being about the distance that a man or two bent on evil could
compass in the night time. But it is not always night; numerous fires are
started in broad daylight. Stress of winter weather, little food, and
clothing, and less fuel at home have been put forward as causes of a
chill desperation, ending in crime. On the contrary, these fires
frequently occur when labourers' pockets are full, just after they have
received their harvest wages. Bread is not at famine prices; hard masters
are not specially selected for the gratification of spite; good masters
suffer equally. What then is the cause?

There is none but that bitter, bitter feeling which I venture to call the
dynamite disposition, and which is found in every part of the civilised
world; in Germany, Italy, France, and our own mildly ruled England. A
brooding, morose, concentrated hatred of those who possess any kind of
substance or comfort; landlord, farmer, every one. An unsparing vendetta,
a merciless shark-like thirst of destructive vengeance; a monomania of
battering, smashing, crushing, such as seizes the Lancashire weaver, who
kicks his woman's brains out without any special reason for dislike,
mingled with and made more terrible by this unchangeable hostility to
property and those who own it. No creed, no high moral hopes of the
rights of man and social regeneration, no true sans culottism even,
nothing at all but set teeth and inflated nostrils; blow up, burn, smash,
annihilate! A disposition or character which is not imaginary but a fact,
as proved abundantly by the placing of rails and iron chairs on lines to
upset trains, by the dynamite explosions at Government offices, railway
stations, and even at newspaper offices, the sending of letters filled
with explosives, firing dynamite in trout streams just to destroy the
harmless fish; a character which in the country has hitherto manifested
itself in the burning of ricks and farm buildings. Science is always
putting fresh power into the hands of this class. In cities they have
partly awakened to the power of knowledge; in the country they still use
the match. If any one thinks that there is no danger in England because
there are no deep-seated causes of discontent, such as foreign rule,
oppressive enactments, or conscription, I can assure him that he is
wofully mistaken. This class needs no cause at all; prosperity cannot
allay its hatred, and adversity does not weaken it. It is certainly
unwise to the last degree to provoke this demon, to control which as yet
no means have been found. You cannot arrest the invisible; you cannot
pour Martini-Henry bullets into a phantom. How are you going to capture
people who blow themselves into atoms in order to shatter the frame of a
Czar?

In its dealings with the lower class this generation is certainly far
from wise. Never was the distinction so sharp between the poor--the
sullen poor who stand scornful and desperate at the street corners--and
the well-to-do. The contrast now extends to every one who can afford a
black coat. It is not confined to the millionaire. The contrast is with
every black coat. Those who only see the drawing-room side of society,
those who move, too, in the well-oiled atmosphere of commercial offices,
are quite ignorant of the savage animosity which watches them to and fro
the office or the drawing-room from the street corner. Question it is if
any mediaeval soldiery bursting abroad in Sinigaglia were so brutal as is
the street rough, that blot and hideous product of modern civilisation.
How easy it is to point to the sobriety and the good sense of the working
class and smile in assumed complacency! What have the sober mass of the
working class to do with it? No more than you or I, or the Rothschilds,
or dukes of blood royal. There the thing is, and it requires no great
sagacity to see that the present mode of dealing with it is a failure and
likely to be worse. If you have gunpowder, you should not put it under
hydraulic pressure. You should not stir it up and hold matches to it to
see if it is there. That is what prosecutions and imprisonments on
charges of atheism and so on do. It is stirring up the powder and trying
it with a match.

Nor should you put it under hydraulic pressure, which is now being done
all over the country, under the new laws which force every wretch who
enters a workhouse for a night's shelter to stay there two nights; under
the cold-blooded cruelty which, in the guise of science, takes the
miserable quarter of a pint of ale from the lips of the palsied and
decrepit inmates; which puts the imbecile--even the guiltless
imbecile--on what is practically bread and water. Words fail me to
express the cruelty and inhumanity of this crazed legislation.

Sometimes we see a complacent paragraph in the papers, penned by an
official doubtless, congratulating the public that the number relieved
under the new regulations has dropped from, say, six hundred to a hundred
and fifty. And what, oh blindest of the blind, do you imagine has become
of the remaining four hundred and fifty? Has your precious folly
extinguished them? Are they dead? No, indeed. All over the country,
hydraulic pressure, in the name of science, progress, temperance, and
similar perverted things, is being put on the gunpowder--or the dynamite,
if you like--of society. Every now and then some individual member of the
Army of Wretches turns and becomes the Devil of modern civilisation.
Modern civilisation has put out the spiritual Devil and produced the
Demon of Dynamite. Let me raise a voice, in pleading for more humane
treatment of the poor--the only way, believe me, by which society can
narrow down and confine the operations of this new Devil. A human being
is not a dog, yet is treated worse than a dog.

Force these human dogs to learn to read with empty stomachs--stomachs
craving for a piece of bread while education is crammed into them. In
manhood, if unfortunate, set them to break stones. If imbecility
supervene give them bread and water. In helpless age give them the cup of
cold water. This is the way to breed dynamite. And then at the other end
of the scale let your Thames Embankment Boulevard be the domain of the
street rough; let your Islington streets be swept by bands of brutes; let
the well dressed be afraid to venture anywhere unless in the glare of gas
and electric light! Manufacture it in one district, and give it free
scope and play in another. Yet never was there an age in which the mass
of society, from the titled to the cottager, was so full of real and true
humanity, so ready to start forward to help, so imbued with the highest
sentiments. The wrong is done in official circles. No steel-clad baron of
Norman days, no ruthless red-stockinged cardinal, with the Bastile in one
hand and the tumbril in the other, ever ruled with so total an absence of
Heart as the modern "official," the Tyrants of the nineteenth century;
whose rods are hobbies in the name of science miscalled, in the name of
temperance perverted, in the name of progress backwards, in the name of
education without food. It is time that the common-sense of society at
large rose in revolution against it. Meantime dynamite.

This is a long digression: suppose while you have been reading it that
Mr. Roberts has passed one of the two terrible nights, his faithful Bill
at one end of the rickyard and himself at the other. The second night
they took up their positions in the same manner as soon as it was dark.
There was no moon, and the sky was overcast with those stationary clouds
which often precede a great storm, so that the darkness was marked, and
after they had parted a step or two they lost sight of each other. Worn
with long wakefulness, and hard labour during the day, they both dropped
asleep at their posts. Mr. Roberts awoke from the dead vacancy of sleep
to the sensation of a flash of light crossing his eyelids, and to catch a
glimpse of a man's neck with a red necktie illuminated by flame like a
Rembrandt head in the centre of shadow. He leaped forward literally
yelling--the incendiary he wholly forgot--his rick! his rick! He beat the
side of the rick with his stick, and as it had but just caught he beat
the flame out. Then he dropped senseless on the ground. Bill, awakened by
Roberts' awful yell or shriek of excitement, started to his feet, heard a
man rushing by in the darkness, and hurled his heavy stick in that
direction. By the thud which followed and a curse, he knew it had hit the
object, but not with sufficient force to bring the scoundrel down. The
fellow escaped; Bill went to his master and lifted him up; how he got
Roberts home he did not know, but it was hours before Roberts could
speak. Towards sunrise he recovered, and would go immediately to assure
himself that the ricks were safe. Then they found a man's hat--Bill's
stick had knocked it off--and by that hat and the red necktie the
incendiary was brought to justice. The hat was big Mat's; he always wore
a red necktie.

Big Mat made no defence; he was simply stolidly indifferent to the whole
proceedings. The only statement he made was that he had not fired four of
the ricks, and he did not know who had done so. Example is contagious;
some one had followed the dynamite lead, detection never took place, but
the fires ceased. Mat, of course, went for the longest period of penal
servitude the law allotted. I should say that he did not himself know why
he did it. That intense, brooding moroseness, that wormwood hatred, does
not often understand itself. So much the more dangerous is it; no
argument, no softening influence can reach it.

Faithful Bill, who had served Mr. Roberts almost all his life, and who
probably would have served him till the end, received a money reward from
the insurance office for his share in detecting the incendiary. This
reward ruined him--killed him. Golden sovereigns in his pocket destroyed
him. He went on the drink; he drank, and was enticed to drink, till in
six weeks he died in the infirmary of the workhouse.

Mat being in the convict prison, and Dolly near to another confinement,
she could not support herself; she was driven to the same workhouse in
which her brother had but just died. I am not sure, but believe that
pseudo-science, the Torturer of these days, denied her the least drop of
alcohol during her travail. If it did permit one drop, then was the
Torturer false to his creed. Dolly survived, but utterly broken,
hollow-chested, a workhouse fixture. Still, so long as she could stand
she had to wash in the laundry; weak as she was, they weakened her still
further with steam and heat, and labour. Washing is hard work for those
who enjoy health and vigour. To a girl, broken in heart and body, it is a
slow destroyer. Heat relaxes all the fibres; Dolly's required bracing.
Steam will soften wood and enable the artificer to bend it to any shape.
Dolly's chest became yet more hollow; her cheek-bones prominent; she bent
to the steam. This was the girl who had lingered in the lane to help the
boy pick watercress, to gather a flower, to listen to a thrush, to bask
in the sunshine. Open air and green fields were to her life itself. Heart
miseries are always better borne in the open air. How just, how truly
scientific, to shut her in a steaming wash-house!

The workhouse was situated in a lovely spot, on the lowest slope of
hills, hills covered afar with woods. Meads at hand, corn-fields farther
away, then green slopes over which broad cloud-shadows glided slowly. The
larks sang in spring, in summer the wheat was golden, in autumn the
distant woods were brown and red and yellow. Had you spent your youth in
those fields, had your little drama of life been enacted in them, do you
not think that you would like at least to gaze out at them from the
windows of your prison? It was observed that the miserable wretches were
always looking out of the windows in this direction. The windows on that
side were accordingly built up and bricked in that they might not look
out.




BITS OF OAK BARK

I

THE ACORN-GATHERER

Black rooks, yellow oak leaves, and a boy asleep at the foot of the tree.
His head was lying on a bulging root close to the stem: his feet reached
to a small sack or bag half full of acorns. In his slumber his forehead
frowned--they were fixed lines, like the grooves in the oak bark. There
was nothing else in his features attractive or repellent: they were such
as might have belonged to a dozen hedge children. The set angry frown was
the only distinguishing mark--like the dents on a penny made by a hobnail
boot, by which it can be known from twenty otherwise precisely similar.
His clothes were little better than sacking, but clean, tidy, and
repaired. Any one would have said, "Poor, but carefully tended." A kind
heart might have put a threepenny-bit in his clenched little fist, and
sighed. But that iron set frown on the young brow would not have unbent
even for the silver. Caw! Caw!

The happiest creatures in the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is
not only the eating of them, but the finding: the fluttering up there and
hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the
bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap
from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel or fight,
having no cause of battle, but they can boast of success, and do so to
the loudest of their voices. He who has selected a choice one flies with
it as if it were a nugget in his beak, out to some open spot of ground,
followed by a general Caw!

This was going on above while the boy slept below. A thrush looked out
from the hedge, and among the short grass there was still the hum of
bees, constant sun-worshippers as they are. The sunshine gleamed on the
rooks' black feathers overhead, and on the sward sparkled from hawkweed,
some lotus and yellow weed, as from a faint ripple of water. The oak was
near a corner formed by two hedges, and in the angle was a narrow thorny
gap. Presently an old woman, very upright, came through this gap carrying
a faggot on her shoulder and a stout ash stick in her hand. She was very
clean, well dressed for a labouring woman, hard of feature, but superior
in some scarcely defined way to most of her class. The upright carriage
had something to do with it, the firm mouth, the light blue eyes that
looked every one straight in the face. Possibly these, however, had less
effect than her conscious righteousness. Her religion lifted her above
the rest, and I do assure you that it was perfectly genuine. That hard
face and cotton gown would have gone to the stake.

When she had got through the gap she put the faggot down in it, walked a
short distance out into the field, and came back towards the boy, keeping
him between her and the corner. Caw! said the rooks, Caw! Caw! Thwack,
thwack, bang, went the ash stick on the sleeping boy, heavily enough to
have broken his bones. Like a piece of machinery suddenly let loose,
without a second of dubious awakening and without a cry, he darted
straight for the gap in the corner. There the faggot stopped him, and
before he could tear it away the old woman had him again, thwack, thwack,
and one last stinging slash across his legs as he doubled past her. Quick
as the wind as he rushed he picked up the bag of acorns and pitched it
into the mound, where the acorns rolled down into a pond and were lost--a
good round shilling's worth. Then across the field without his cap, over
the rising ground, and out of sight. The old woman made no attempt to
hold him, knowing from previous experience that it was useless, and would
probably result in her own overthrow. The faggot, brought a quarter of a
mile for the purpose, enabled her, you see, to get two good chances at
him.

A wickeder boy never lived: nothing could be done with the reprobate. He
was her grandson--at least, the son of her daughter, for he was not
legitimate. The man drank, the girl died, as was believed, of sheer
starvation: the granny kept the child, and he was now between ten and
eleven years old. She had done and did her duty, as she understood it. A
prayer-meeting was held in her cottage twice a week, she prayed herself
aloud among them, she was a leading member of the sect. Neither example,
precept, nor the rod could change that boy's heart. In time perhaps she
got to beat him from habit rather than from any particular anger of the
moment, just as she fetched water and filled her kettle, as one of the
ordinary events of the day. Why did not the father interfere? Because if
so he would have had to keep his son: so many shillings a week the less
for ale.

In the garden attached to the cottage there was a small shed with a
padlock, used to store produce or wood in. One morning, after a severe
beating, she drove the boy in there and locked him in the whole day
without food. It was no use, he was as hardened as ever.

A footpath which crossed the field went by the cottage, and every Sunday
those who were walking to church could see the boy in the window with
granny's Bible open before him. There he had to sit, the door locked,
under terror of stick, and study the page. What was the use of compelling
him to do that? He could not read. "No," said the old woman, "he won't
read, but I makes him look at his book."

The thwacking went on for some time, when one day the boy was sent on an
errand two or three miles, and for a wonder started willingly enough. At
night he did not return, nor the next day, nor the next, and it was as
clear as possible that he had run away. No one thought of tracking his
footsteps, or following up the path he had to take, which passed a
railway, brooks, and a canal. He had run away, and he might stop away: it
was beautiful summer weather, and it would do him no harm to stop out for
a week. A dealer who had business in a field by the canal thought indeed
that he saw something in the water, but he did not want any trouble, nor
indeed did he know that some one was missing. Most likely a dead dog; so
he turned his back and went to look again at the cow he thought of
buying. A barge came by, and the steerswoman, with a pipe in her mouth,
saw something roll over and come up under the rudder: the length of the
barge having passed over it. She knew what it was, but she wanted to
reach the wharf and go ashore and have a quart of ale. No use picking it
up, only make a mess on deck, there was no reward--"Gee-up! Neddy." The
barge went on, turning up the mud in the shallow water, sending ripples
washing up to the grassy meadow shores, while the moorhens hid in the
flags till it was gone. In time a labourer walking on the towing-path saw
"it," and fished it out, and with it a slender ash sapling, with twine
and hook, a worm still on it. This was why the dead boy had gone so
willingly, thinking to fish in the "river," as he called the canal. When
his feet slipped and he fell in, his fishing-line somehow became twisted
about his arms and legs, else most likely he would have scrambled out, as
it was not very deep. This was the end; nor was he even remembered. Does
any one sorrow for the rook, shot, and hung up as a scarecrow? The boy
had been talked to, and held up as a scarecrow all his life: he was dead,
and that is all. As for granny, she felt no twinge: she had done her
duty.


II

THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY

A great beech tree with a white mark some way up the trunk stood in the
mound by a gate which opened into a lane. Strangers coming down the lane
in the dusk often hesitated before they approached this beech. The white
mark looked like a ghostly figure emerging from the dark hedge and the
shadow of the tree. The trunk itself was of the same hue at that hour as
the bushes, so that the whiteness seemed to stand out unsupported. So
perfect was the illusion that even those who knew the spot well, walking
or riding past and not thinking about it, started as it suddenly came
into sight. Ploughboys used to throw flints at it, as if the sound of the
stone striking the tree assured them that it was really material. Some
lichen was apparently the cause of this whiteness: the great beech indeed
was known to be decaying and was dotted with knot-holes high above. The
gate was rather low, so that any one could lean with arms over the top
bar.

At one time a lady used to be very frequently seen just inside the gate,
generally without a hat, for the homestead was close by. Sometimes a
horse, saddled and bridled, but without his rider, was observed to be
fastened to the gate, and country people, being singularly curious and
inquisitive, if they chanced to go by always peered through every opening
in the hedge till they had discerned where the pair were walking among
the cowslips. More often a spaniel betrayed them, especially in the
evening, for while the courting was proceeding he amused himself digging
with his paws at the rabbit-holes in the mound. The folk returning to
their cottages at even smiled and looked meaningly at each other if they
heard a peculiarly long and shrill whistle, which was known to every one
as Luke's signal. Some said that it was heard every evening: no matter
how far Luke had to ride in the day, his whistle was sure to be heard
towards dusk. Luke was a timber-dealer, or merchant, a calling that
generally leads to substantial profit as wealth is understood in country
places. lie bought up likely timber all over the neighbourhood: he had
wharves on the canal, and yards by the little railway station miles away.
He often went up to "Lunnon," but if it was ninety miles, he was sure to
be back in time to whistle. If he was not too busy the whistle used to go
twice a day, for when he started off in the morning, no matter where he
had to go to, that lane was the road to it. The lane led everywhere.


Up in the great beech about eleven o'clock on spring mornings there was
always a wood-pigeon. The wood-pigeon is a contemplative sort of bird,
and pauses now and then during the day to consider over his labours in
filling his crop. He came again about half-past four, but it was at
eleven that his visit to the beech was usually noticed. From the window
in the lady's own room the beech and the gate could be seen, and as that
was often Luke's time she frequently sat upstairs with the window open
listening for the sound of hoofs, or the well-known whistle. She saw the
wood-pigeon on so many occasions that at last she grew to watch for the
bird, and when he went up into the tree, put down her work or her book
and walked out that way. Secure in the top of the great beech, and
conscious that it was spring, when guns are laid aside, the wood-pigeon
took no heed of her. There is nothing so pleasant to stroll among as
cowslips. This mead was full of them, so much so that a little way in
front the surface seemed yellow. They had all short stalks; this is
always the case where these flowers grow very thickly, and the bells were
a pale and somewhat lemon colour. The great cowslips with deep yellow and
marked spots grow by themselves in bunches in corners or on the banks of
brooks. Here a man might have mown acres of cowslips, pale but sweet. Out
of their cups the bees hummed as she walked amongst them, a closed book
in her hand, dreaming. She generally returned with Luke's spaniel beside
her, for whether his master came or not the knowing dog rarely missed his
visit, aware that there was always something good for him.

One morning she went dreaming on like this through the cowslips, past the
old beech and the gate, and along by the nut-tree hedge. It was very
sunny and warm, and the birds sang with all their might, for there had
been a shower at dawn, which always set their hearts atune. At least
eight or nine of them were singing at once, thrush and blackbird, cuckoo
(afar off), dove, and greenfinch, nightingale, robin and loud wren, and
larks in the sky. But, unlike all other music, though each had a
different voice and the notes crossed and interfered with each other, yet
they did not jangle, but produced the sweetest sounds. The more of them
that sang together, the sweeter the music. It is true they all had one
thought of love at heart, and that perhaps brought about the concord. She
did not expect to see Luke that morning, knowing that he had to get some
felled trees removed from a field, the farmer wishing them taken away
before the mowing-grass grew too high, and as the spot was ten or twelve
miles distant he had to start early. Not being so much on the alert, she
fell deeper perhaps into reverie, which lasted till she reached the other
side of the field, when the spaniel rushed out of the hedge and leaped up
to be noticed, quite startling her. At the same moment she thought she
heard the noise of hoofs in the lane--it might be Luke--and immediately
afterwards there came his long, shrill, and peculiar whistle from the
gate under the beech. She ran as fast as she could, the spaniel. barking
beside her, and was at the gate in two or three minutes, but Luke was not
there. Nor was he anywhere in the lane--she could see up and down it over
the low gate. He must have gone on up to the homestead, not seeing her.
At the house, however, she found they had not seen him. He had not
called. A little hurt that he should have galloped on so hastily, she set
about some household affairs, resolved to think no more of him that
morning, and to give him a frown when he came in the evening. But he did
not come in the evening; it was evident he was detained.

Luke's trees were lying in the long grass beside a copse, and the object
was to get them out of the field, across the adjacent railway, and to set
them down in a lane, on the sward, whence he could send for them at
leisure. The farmer was very anxious to get them out of the grass, and
Luke did his best to oblige him. When Luke arrived at the spot, having
for once ridden straight there, he found that almost all the work was
done, and only one tree remained. This they were getting up on the
timber-carriage, and Luke dismounted and assisted. While it was on the
timber-carriage, he said, as it was the last, they could take it along to
the wharf. The farmer had come down to watch how the work got on, and
with him was his little boy, a child of five or six. When the boy saw the
great tree fixed, he cried to be mounted on it for a ride, but as it was
so rough they persuaded him to ride on one of the horses instead. As they
all approached the gate at the level crossing, a white gate with the
words in long black letters, "To be kept Locked," they heard the roar of
the morning express and stayed for it to go by. So soon as the train had
passed, the gate was opened and the horses began to drag the carriage
across. As they strained at the heavy weight, the boy found the motion
uncomfortable and cried out, and Luke, always kind-hearted, went and held
him on. Whether it was the shouting at the team, the cracking of the
whip, the rumbling of the wheels, or what, was never known; but suddenly
the farmer, who had crossed the rail, screamed, "The goods!" Round the
curve by the copse, and till then hidden by it, swept a goods train,
scarce thirty yards away. Luke might have saved himself, but the boy! He
snatched the child from the horse, hurled him--literally hurled him--into
the father's arms, and in the instant was a shapeless mass. The scene is
too dreadful for further description. This miserable accident happened,
as the driver of the goods train afterwards stated, at exactly eight
minutes past eleven o'clock.

It was precisely at that time that Luke's lady, dreaming among the
cowslips, heard the noise of hoofs, and his long, shrill, and peculiar
whistle at the gate beneath the beech. She was certain of the time, for
these reasons: first, she had seen the wood-pigeon go up into the beech
just before she started out; secondly, she remembered nodding to an aged
labourer who came up to the house every morning at that hour for his ale;
thirdly, it would take a person walking slowly eight or ten minutes to
cross that side of the mead; and, fourthly, when she came back to the
house to see if Luke was there, the clock pointed to a quarter past, and
was known to be a little fast. Without a doubt she had heard the
well-known whistle, apparently coming from the gate beneath the beech
exactly at the moment poor Luke was dashed to pieces twelve miles away.




III

A ROMAN BROOK



The brook has forgotten me, but I have not forgotten the brook. Many
faces have been mirrored since in the flowing water, many feet have waded
in the sandy shallow. I wonder if any one else can see it in a picture
before the eyes as I can, bright, and vivid as trees suddenly shown at
night by a great flash of lightning. All the leaves and branches and the
birds at roost are visible during the flash. It is barely a second; it
seems much longer. Memory, like the lightning, reveals the pictures in
the mind. Every curve, and shore, and shallow is as familiar now as when
I followed the winding stream so often. When the mowing-grass was at its
height, you could not walk far beside the bank; it grew so thick and
strong and full of umbelliferous plants as to weary the knees. The life
as it were of the meadows seemed to crowd down towards the brook in
summer, to reach out and stretch towards the life-giving water. There the
buttercups were taller and closer together, nails of gold driven so
thickly that the true surface was not visible. Countless rootlets drew up
the richness of the earth like miners in the darkness, throwing their
petals of yellow ore broadcast above them. With their fulness of leaves
the hawthorn bushes grow larger--the trees extend farther--and thus
overhung with leaf and branch, and closely set about by grass and plant,
the brook disappeared only a little way off, and could not have been
known from a mound and hedge. It was lost in the plain of meads--the
flowers alone saw its sparkle.

Hidden in those bushes and tall grasses, high in the trees and low on the
ground, there were the nests of happy birds. In the hawthorns blackbirds
and thrushes built, often overhanging the stream, and the fledglings
fluttered out into the flowery grass. Down among the stalks of the
umbelliferous plants, where the grasses were knotted together, the
nettle-creeper concealed her treasure, having selected a hollow by the
bank so that the scythe should pass over. Up in the pollard ashes and
willows here and there wood-pigeons built. Doves cooed in the little
wooded enclosures where the brook curved almost round upon itself. If
there was a hollow in the oak a pair of starlings chose it, for there was
no advantageous nook that was not seized on. Low beside the willow stoles
the sedge-reedlings built; on the ledges of the ditches, full of flags,
moor-hens made their nests. After the swallows had coursed long miles
over the meads to and fro, they rested on the tops of the ashes and
twittered sweetly. Like the flowers and grass, the birds were drawn
towards the brook. They built by it, they came to it to drink; in the
evening a grasshopper-lark trilled in a hawthorn bush. By night crossing
the footbridge a star sometimes shone in the water underfoot. At morn and
even the peasant girls came down to dip; their path was worn through the
mowing-grass, and there was a flat stone let into the bank as a step to
stand on. Though they were poorly habited, without one line of form or
tint of colour that could please the eye, there is something in dipping
water that is Greek--Homeric--something that carries the mind home to
primitive times. Always the little children came with them; they too
loved the brook like the grass and birds. They wanted to see the fishes
dart away and hide in the green flags: they flung daisies and buttercups
into the stream to float and catch awhile at the flags, and float again
and pass away, like the friends of our boyhood, out of sight. Where there
was pasture roan cattle came to drink, and horses, restless horses, stood
for hours by the edge under the shade of ash trees. With what joy the
spaniel plunged in, straight from the bank out among the flags--you could
mark his course by seeing their tips bend as he brushed them swimming.
All life loved the brook.

Far down away from roads and hamlets there was a small orchard on the
very bank of the stream, and just before the grass grew too high to walk
through I looked in the enclosure to speak to its owner. He was busy with
his spade at a strip of garden, and grumbled that the hares would not let
it alone, with all that stretch of grass to feed on. Nor would the rooks;
and the moor-hens ran over it, and the water-rats burrowed; the
wood-pigeons would have the peas, and there was no rest from them all.
While he talked and talked, far from the object in hand, as aged people
will, I thought how the apple tree in blossom before us cared little
enough who saw its glory. The branches were in bloom everywhere, at the
top as well as at the side; at the top where no one could see them but
the swallows. They did not grow for human admiration: that was not their
purpose; that is our affair only--we bring the thought to the tree. On a
short branch low down the trunk there hung the weather-beaten and broken
handle of an earthenware vessel; the old man said it was a jug, one of
the old folks' jugs--he often dug them up. Some were cracked, some nearly
perfect; lots of them had been thrown out to mend the lane. There were
some chips among the heap of weeds yonder. These fragments were the
remains of Anglo-Roman pottery. Coins had been found--half a gallon of
them--the children had had most. He took one from his pocket, dug up that
morning; they were of no value, they would not ring. The labourers tried
to get some ale for them, but could not; no one would take the little
brass things. That was all he knew of the Caesars: the apples were in
fine bloom now, weren't they?

Fifteen centuries before there had been a Roman station at the spot where
the lane crossed the brook. There the centurions rested their troops
after their weary march across the downs, for the lane, now bramble-grown
and full of ruts, was then a Roman road. There were villas, and baths,
and fortifications; these things you may read about in books. They are
lost now in the hedges, under the flowering grass, in the ash copses, all
forgotten in the lane, and along the footpath where the June roses will
bloom after the apple blossom has dropped. But just where the ancient
military way crosses the brook there grow the finest, the largest, the
bluest, and most lovely forget-me-nots that ever lover gathered for his
lady.

The old man, seeing my interest in the fragments of pottery, wished to
show me something of a different kind lately discovered. He led me to a
spot where the brook was deep, and had somewhat undermined the edge. A
horse trying to drink there had pushed a quantity of earth into the
stream, and exposed a human skeleton lying within a few inches of the
water. Then I looked up the stream and remembered the buttercups and tall
grasses, the flowers that crowded down to the edge; I remembered the
nests, and the dove cooing; the girls that came down to dip, the children
that cast their flowers to float away. The wind blew the loose apple
bloom and it fell in showers of painted snow. Sweetly the greenfinches
were calling in the trees: afar the voice of the cuckoo came over the
oaks. By the side of the living water, the water that all things rejoiced
in, near to its gentle sound, and the sparkle of sunshine on it, had lain
this sorrowful thing.




MEADOW THOUGHTS

The old house stood by the silent country road, secluded by many a long,
long mile, and yet again secluded within the great walls of the garden.
Often and often I rambled up to the milestone which stood under an oak,
to look at the chipped inscription low down--"To London, 79 Miles." So
far away, you see, that the very inscription was cut at the foot of the
stone, since no one would be likely to want that information. It was half
hidden by docks and nettles, despised and unnoticed. A broad land this
seventy-nine miles--how many meadows and corn-fields, hedges and woods,
in that distance?--wide enough to seclude any house, to hide it, like an
acorn in the grass. Those who have lived all their lives in remote places
do not feel the remoteness. No one else seemed to be conscious of the
breadth that separated the place from the great centre, but it was,
perhaps, that consciousness which deepened the solitude to me. It made
the silence more still; the shadows of the oaks yet slower in their
movement; everything more earnest. To convey a full impression of the
intense concentration of Nature in the meadows is very difficult--
everything is so utterly oblivious of man's thought and man's heart. The
oaks stand--quiet, still--so still that the lichen loves them. At their
feet the grass grows, and heeds nothing. Among it the squirrels leap, and
their little hearts are as far away from you or me as the very wood of
the oaks. The sunshine settles itself in the valley by the brook, and
abides there whether we come or not. Glance through the gap in the hedge
by the oak, and see how concentrated it is--all of it, every blade of
grass, and leaf, and flower, and living creature, finch or squirrel. It
is mesmerised upon itself. Then I used to feel that it really was
seventy-nine miles to London, and not an hour or two only by rail, really
all those miles. A great, broad province of green furrow and ploughed
furrow between the old house and the city of the world. Such solace and
solitude seventy-nine miles thick cannot be painted; the trees cannot be
placed far enough away in perspective. It is necessary to stay in it like
the oaks to know it.

Lime-tree branches overhung the corner of the garden-wall, whence a view
was easy of the silent and dusty road, till overarching oaks concealed
it. The white dust heated by the sunshine, the green hedges, and the
heavily massed trees, white clouds rolled together in the sky, a footpath
opposite lost in the fields, as you might thrust a stick into the grass,
tender lime leaves caressing the cheek, and silence. That is, the silence
of the fields. If a breeze rustled the boughs, if a greenfinch called, if
the cart-mare in the meadow shook herself, making the earth and air
tremble by her with the convulsion of her mighty muscles, these were not
sounds, they were the silence itself. So sensitive to it as I was, in its
turn it held me firmly, like the fabled spells of old time. The mere
touch of a leaf was a talisman to bring me under the enchantment, so that
I seemed to feel and know all that was proceeding among the grass-blades
and in the bushes. Among the lime trees along the wall the birds never
built, though so close and sheltered. They built everywhere but there. To
the broad coping-stones of the wall under the lime boughs speckled
thrushes came almost hourly, sometimes to peer out and reconnoitre if it
was safe to visit the garden, sometimes to see if a snail had climbed up
the ivy. Then they dropped quietly down into the long strawberry patch
immediately under. The cover of strawberries is the constant resource of
all creeping things; the thrushes looked round every plant and under
every leaf and runner. One toad always resided there, often two, and as
you gathered a ripe strawberry you might catch sight of his black eye
watching you take the fruit he had saved for you.

Down the road skims an eave-swallow, swift as an arrow, his white back
making the sun-dried dust dull and dingy; he is seeking a pool for
mortar, and will waver to and fro by the brook below till he finds a
convenient place to alight. Thence back to the eave here, where for forty
years he and his ancestors built in safety. Two white butterflies
fluttering round each other rise over the limes, once more up over the
house, and soar on till their white shows no longer against the illumined
air. A grasshopper calls on the sward by the strawberries, and
immediately fillips himself over seven leagues of grass-blades. Yonder a
line of men and women file across the field, seen for a moment as they
pass a gateway, and the hay changes from hay-colour to green behind them
as they turn the under but still sappy side upwards. They are working
hard, but it looks easy, slow, and sunny. Finches fly out from the
hedgerow to the overturned hay. Another butterfly, a brown one, floats
along the dusty road--the only traveller yet. The white clouds are slowly
passing behind the oaks, large puffed clouds, like deliberate loads of
hay, leaving little wisps and flecks behind them caught in the sky. How
pleasant it would be to read in the shadow! There is a broad shadow on
the sward by the strawberries cast by a tall and fine-grown American crab
tree. The very place for a book; and although I know it is useless, yet I
go and fetch one and dispose myself on the grass.

I can never read in summer out-of-doors. Though in shadow the bright
light fills it, summer shadows are broadest daylight. The page is so
white and hard, the letters so very black, the meaning and drift not
quite intelligible, because neither eye nor mind will dwell upon it.
Human thoughts and imaginings written down are pale and feeble in bright
summer light. The eye wanders away, and rests more lovingly on greensward
and green lime leaves. The mind wanders yet deeper and farther into the
dreamy mystery of the azure sky. Once now and then, determined to write
down that mystery and delicious sense while actually in it, I have
brought out table and ink and paper, and sat there in the midst of the
summer day. Three words, and where is the thought? Gone. The paper is so
obviously paper, the ink so evidently ink, the pen so stiff; all so
inadequate. You want colour, flexibility, light, sweet low sound--all
these to paint it and play it in music, at the same time you want
something that will answer to and record in one touch the strong throb of
life and the thought, or feeling, or whatever it is that goes out into
the earth and sky and space, endless as a beam of light. The very shade
of the pen on the paper tells you how utterly hopeless it is to express
these things. There is the shade and the brilliant gleaming whiteness;
now tell me in plain written words the simple contrast of the two. Not in
twenty pages, for the bright light shows the paper in its common
fibre-ground, coarse aspect, in its reality, not as a mind-tablet.

The delicacy and beauty of thought or feeling is so extreme that it
cannot be inked in; it is like the green and blue of field and sky, of
veronica flower and grass blade, which in their own existence throw light
and beauty on each other, but in artificial colours repel. Take the table
indoors again, and the book; the thoughts and imaginings of others are
vain, and of your own too deep to be written. For the mind is filled with
the exceeding beauty of these things, and their great wondrousness and
marvel. Never yet have I been able to write what I felt about the
sunlight only. Colour and form and light are as magic to me. It is a
trance. It requires a language of ideas to convey it. It is ten years
since I last reclined on that grass plot, and yet I have been writing of
it as if it was yesterday, and every blade of grass is as visible and as
real to me now as then. They were greener towards the house, and more
brown-tinted on the margin of the strawberry bed, because towards the
house the shadow rested longest. By the strawberries the fierce sunlight
burned them.

The sunlight put out the books I brought into it just as it put out the
fire on the hearth indoors. The tawny flames floating upwards could not
bite the crackling sticks when the full beams came pouring on them. Such
extravagance of light overcame the little fire till it was screened from
the power of the heavens. So here in the shadow of the American crab tree
the light of the sky put out the written pages. For this beautiful and
wonderful light excited a sense of some likewise beautiful and wonderful
truth, some unknown but grand thought hovering as a swallow above. The
swallows hovered and did not alight, but they were there. An
inexpressible thought quivered in the azure overhead; it could not be
fully grasped, but there was a sense and feeling of its presence. Before
that mere sense of its presence the weak and feeble pages, the small
fires of human knowledge, dwindled and lost meaning. There was something
here that was not in the books. In all the philosophies and searches of
mind there was nothing that could be brought to face it, to say, This is
what it intends, this is the explanation of the dream. The very
grass-blades confounded the wisest, the tender lime leaf put them to
shame, the grasshopper derided them, the sparrow on the wall chirped his
scorn. The books were put out, unless a screen were placed between them
and the light of the sky--that is, an assumption, so as to make an
artificial mental darkness. Grant some assumptions--that is, screen off
the light--and in that darkness everything was easily arranged, this
thing here, and that yonder. But Nature grants no assumptions, and the
books were put out. There is something beyond the philosophies in the
light, in the grass-blades, the leaf, the grasshopper, the sparrow on the
wall. Some day the great and beautiful thought which hovers on the
confines of the mind will at last alight. In that is hope, the whole sky
is full of abounding hope. Something beyond the books, that is
consolation.

The little lawn beside the strawberry bed, burned brown there, and green
towards the house shadow, holds how many myriad grass-blades? Here they
are all matted together, long, and dragging each other down. Part them,
and beneath them are still more, overhung and hidden. The fibres are
intertangled, woven in an endless basket-work and chaos of green and
dried threads. A blamable profusion this; a fifth as many would be
enough; altogether a wilful waste here. As for these insects that spring
out of it as I press the grass, a hundredth part of them would suffice.
The American crab tree is a snowy mount in spring; the flakes. of bloom,
when they fall, cover the grass with a film--a bushel of bloom, which the
wind takes and scatters afar. The extravagance is sublime. The two little
cherry trees are as wasteful; they throw away handfuls of flower; but in
the meadows the careless, spendthrift ways of grass and flower and all
things are not to be expressed. Seeds by the hundred million float with
absolute indifference on the air. The oak has a hundred thousand more
leaves than necessary, and never hides a single acorn. Nothing
utilitarian--everything on a scale of splendid waste. Such noble,
broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious to behold. Never was there such
a lying proverb as "Enough is as good as a feast." Give me the feast;
give me squandered millions of seeds, luxurious carpets of petals, green
mountains of oak leaves. The greater the waste, the greater the
enjoyment--the nearer the approach to real life. Casuistry is of no
avail; the fact is obvious; Nature flings treasures abroad, puffs them
with open ups along on every breeze, piles up lavish layers of them in
the free open air, packs countless numbers together in the needles of a
fir tree. Prodigality and superfluity are stamped on everything she does.
The ear of wheat returns a hundredfold the grain from which it grew. The
surface of the earth offers to us far more than we can consume--the
grains, the seeds, the fruits, the animals, the abounding products are
beyond the power of all the human race to devour. They can, too, be
multiplied a thousandfold. There is no natural lack. Whenever there is
lack among us it is from artificial causes, which intelligence should
remove.

From the littleness, and meanness, and niggardliness forced upon us by
circumstances, what a relief to turn aside to the exceeding plenty of
Nature! There are no bounds to it, there is no comparison to parallel it,
so great is this generosity. No physical reason exists why every human
being should not have sufficient, at least, of necessities. For any human
being to starve, or even to be in trouble about the procuring of simple
food, appears, indeed, a strange and unaccountable thing, quite upside
down, and contrary to sense, if you do but consider a moment the enormous
profusion the earth throws at our feet. In the slow process of time, as
the human heart grows larger, such provision, I sincerely trust, will be
made that no one need ever feel anxiety about mere subsistence. Then,
too, let there be some imitation of this open-handed generosity and
divine waste. Let the generations to come feast free of care, like my
finches on the seeds of the mowing-grass, from which no voice drives
them. If I could but give away as freely as the earth does!

The white-backed eave-swallow has returned many, many times from the
shallow drinking-place by the brook to his half-built nest. Sometimes the
pair of them cling to the mortar they have fixed under the eave, and
twitter to each other about the progress of the work. They dive downwards
with such velocity when they quit hold that it seems as if they must
strike the ground, but they shoot up again, over the wall and the lime
trees. A thrush has been to the arbour yonder twenty times; it is made of
crossed laths, and overgrown with "tea-plant," and the nest is inside the
lath-work. A sparrow has visited the rose-tree by the wall--the buds are
covered with aphides. A brown tree-creeper has been to the limes, then to
the cherries, and even to a stout lilac stem. No matter how small the
tree, he tries all that are in his way. The bright colours of a bullfinch
were visible a moment just now, as he passed across the shadows farther
down the garden under the damson trees and into the bushes. The
grasshopper has gone past and along the garden-path, his voice is not
heard now; but there is another coming. While I have been dreaming, all
these and hundreds out in the meadow have been intensely happy. So
concentrated on their little work in the sunshine, so intent on the tiny
egg, on the insect captured on the grass-tip to be carried to the eager
fledglings, so joyful in listening to the song poured out for them or in
pouring it forth, quite oblivious of all else. It is in this intense
concentration that they are so happy. If they could only live
longer!--but a few such seasons for them--I wish they could live a
hundred years just to feast on the seeds and sing and be utterly happy
and oblivious of everything but the moment they are passing. A black line
has rushed up from the espalier apple yonder to the housetop thirty times
at least. The starlings fly so swiftly and so straight that they seem to
leave a black line along the air. They have a nest in the roof, they are
to and fro it and the meadow the entire day, from dawn till eve. The
espalier apple, like a screen, hides the meadow from me, so that the
descending starlings appear to dive into a space behind it. Sloping
downwards the meadow makes a valley; I cannot see it, but know that it is
golden with buttercups, and that a brook runs in the groove of it.

Afar yonder I can see a summit beyond where the grass swells upwards to a
higher level than this spot. There are bushes and elms whose height is
decreased by distance on the summit, horses in the shadow of the trees,
and a small flock of sheep crowded, as is their wont, in the hot and
sunny gateway. By the side of the summit is a deep green trench, so it
looks from here, in the hill-side: it is really the course of a streamlet
worn deep in the earth. I can see nothing between the top of the espalier
screen and the horses under the elms on the hill. But the starlings go up
and down into the hollow space, which is aglow with golden buttercups,
and, indeed, I am looking over a hundred finches eagerly searching,
sweetly calling, happy as the summer day. A thousand thousand
grasshoppers are leaping, thrushes are labouring, filled with love and
tenderness, doves cooing--there is as much joy as there are leaves on the
hedges. Faster than the starling's flight my mind runs up to the
streamlet in the deep green trench beside the hill.

Pleasant it was to trace it upwards, narrowing at every ascending step,
till the thin stream, thinner than fragile glass, did but merely slip
over the stones. A little less and it could not have run at all, water
could not stretch out to greater tenuity. It smoothed the brown growth on
the stones, stroking it softly. It filled up tiny basins of sand and ran
out at the edges between minute rocks of flint. Beneath it went under
thickest brooklime, blue flowered, and serrated water-parsnips, lost like
many a mighty river for awhile among a forest of leaves. Higher up masses
of bramble and projecting thorn stopped the explorer, who must wind round
the grassy mound. Pausing to look back a moment there were meads under
the hill with the shortest and greenest herbage, perpetually watered, and
without one single buttercup, a strip of pure green among yellow flowers
and yellowing corn. A few hollow oaks on whose boughs the cuckoos stayed
to call, two or three peewits coursing up and down, larks singing, and
for all else silence. Between the wheat and the grassy mound the path was
almost closed, burdocks and brambles thrust the adventurer outward to
brush against the wheat-ears. Upwards till suddenly it turned, and led by
steep notches in the bank, as it seemed down to the roots of the elm
trees. The clump of elms grew right over a deep and rugged hollow; their
branches reached out across it, roofing in the cave.

Here was the spring, at the foot of a perpendicular rock, moss-grown low
down, and overrun with creeping ivy higher. Green thorn bushes filled the
chinks and made a wall to the well, and the long narrow hart's-tongue
streaked the face of the cliff. Behind the thick thorns hid the course of
the streamlet, in front rose the solid rock, upon the right hand the
sward came to the edge--it shook every now and then as the horses in the
shade of the elms stamped their feet--on the left hand the ears of wheat
peered over the verge. A rocky cell in concentrated silence of green
things. Now and again a finch, a starling, or a sparrow would come
meaning to drink--athirst from the meadow or the cornfield--and start and
almost entangle their wings in the bushes, so completely astonished that
any one should be there. The spring rises in a hollow under the rock
imperceptibly, and without bubble or sound. The fine sand of the shallow
basin is undisturbed--no tiny water-volcano pushes up a dome of
particles. Nor is there any crevice in the stone, but the basin is always
full and always running over. As it slips from the brim a gleam of
sunshine falls through the boughs and meets it. To this cell I used to
come once now and then on a summer's day, tempted, perhaps, like the
finches, by the sweet cool water, but drawn also by a feeling that could
not be analysed. Stooping, I lifted the water in the hollow of my
hand--carefully, lest the sand might be disturbed--and the sunlight
gleamed on it as it slipped through ray fingers. Alone in the
green-roofed cave, alone with the sunlight and the pure water, there was
a sense of something more than these. The water was more to me than
water, and the sun than sun. The gleaming rays on the water in my palm
held me for a moment, the touch of the water gave me something from
itself. A moment, and the gleam was gone, the water flowing away, but I
had had them. Beside the physical water and physical light I had received
from them their beauty; they had communicated to me this silent mystery.
The pure and beautiful water, the pure, clear, and beautiful light, each
had given me something of their truth.

So many times I came to it, toiling up the long and shadowless bill in
the burning sunshine, often carrying a vessel to take some of it home
with me. There was a brook, indeed but this was different, it was the
spring; it was taken home as a beautiful flower might be brought. It is
not the physical water, it is the sense or feeling that it conveys. Nor
is it the physical sunshine; it is the sense of inexpressible beauty
which it brings with it. Of such I still drink, and hope to do so still
deeper.




CLEMATIS LANE

Wild clematis grew so thickly on one side of the narrow lane that the
hedge seemed made of it. Trailing over the low bushes, the leaves hid the
hawthorn and bramble, so that the hedge was covered with clematis leaf
and flower. The innumerable pale flowers gave out a faint odour, and
coloured the sides of the highway. Rising up the hazel rods and taller
hawthorn, the tendrils hung downwards and suspended the flowers overhead.
Across the field, where a hill rose and was dotted with bushes--these
bushes, too, were concealed by clematis, and though the flowers were so
pale, their numbers tinted the slope. A cropped nut-tree hedge, again,
low, hut five or six yards thick, was bound together by the bines of the
same creeping plant, twisting in and out, and holding it together. No
care or art could have led it over the branches in so graceful a manner;
the lane was festooned for the triumphal progress of the waggons laden
with corn. Here and there, on the dry bank over which the clematis
projected like an eave, there stood tall campanulas, their blue bells as
large as the fingerstall of a foxglove. The slender purple spires of the
climbing vetch were lifted above the low hushes to which it clung; there
were ferns deeper in the hedge, and yellow bedstraw by the gateways. A
few blackberries were ripe, but the clematis seemed to have overcome the
brambles, and spoilt their yield. Nuts, reddened at the tip, were visible
on the higher hazel boughs; they were ripe, but difficult to get at.

Leaving the lane by a waggon track--a gipsy track through a copse--there
were large bunches of pale-red berries hanging from the wayfaring trees,
or wild viburnum, and green and red berries of bryony wreathed among the
branches. The bryony leaves had turned, some were pale buff already.
Among the many berries of autumn those of the wayfaring tree may be known
by their flattened shape, as if the sides had been pressed in like a
flask. The bushes were not high enough for shadow, and the harvest sun
was hot between them. The track led past the foot of a steep headland of
the Downs, which could not be left without an ascent. Dry and slippery,
the short grass gave no hold to the feet, and it was necessary to step in
the holes cut through the turf for the purpose. Pushed forward from the
main line of the Downs, the buff headland projected into the Weald, as
headlands on the southern side of the range project into the sea. Towards
the summit the brow came out somewhat, and even the rude steps in the
turf were not much assistance in climbing this almost perpendicular wall
of sward. Above the brow the ascent became easy; these brows raised
steeper than the general slope are often found on the higher hills. A
circular entrenchment encloses the summit, but the rampart has much sunk,
and is in places levelled. Here it was pleasant to look back upon the
beech woods at the foot of the great Downs, and far over the endless
fields of the Weald or plain. Thirty fields could be counted in
succession, one after the other, like irregular chess-squares, some corn,
some grass, and these only extended to the first undulation, where the
woods hid the fields behind them. But beyond these, in reality, succeeded
another series of fields to the second undulation, and still a third
series to the farthest undulation visible. Yet farther there was a faint
line of hills, a dark cloud-like bank in the extreme distance. To the
right and to the left were similar views. Reapers were at work in the
wheat below, but already much of the corn had been carried, and the hum
of a threshing engine came up from the ricks. A woodpecker called loudly
in the beech wood; a "wish-wish" in the air overhead was caused by the
swift motion of a wood-pigeon passing from "holt" to "hurst," from copse
to copse. On the dry short turf of the hill-top even the shadow of a
swallow was visible as he flew but a few yards high.

In a little hollow where the rougher grasses grew longer a blue butterfly
fluttered and could not get out. He was entangled with his own wings, he
could not guide himself between the grass tops; his wings fluttered and
carried him back again. The grass was like a net to him, and there he
fluttered till the wind lifted him out, and gave him the freedom of the
hills. One small green orchis stood in the grass, alone; the harebells
were many. It is curious that, if gathered, in a few hours (if pressed
between paper) they become a deeper blue than when growing. Another
butterfly went over, large and velvety, flying head to the wind, but
unable to make way against it, and so carried sidelong across the
current. From the summit of the hill he drifted out into the air five
hundred feet above the flowers of the plain. Perhaps it was a peacock;
for there was a peacock-butterfly in Clematis Lane. The harebells swung,
and the dry tips of the grass bent to the wind which came over the hills
from the sea, but from which the sun had dried the sea-moisture, leaving
it twice refined--once by the passage above a hundred miles of wave and
foam and again by the grasses and the hills, which forced the current to
a higher level, where the sunbeams dried it. Twice refined, the air was
strong and pure, sweet like the scent of a flower. If the air at the
sea-beach is good, that of the hills above the sea is at least twice as
good, and twice as strengthening. It possesses all the virtue of the sea
air without the moisture which ultimately loosens the joints, and seems
to penetrate to the very nerves. Those who desire air and quick recovery
should go to the hills, where the wind has a scent of the sunbeams.

In the short time since ascending the slope the definition of the view
has changed. At first it was clear indeed, and no one would have supposed
there was any mist. But now suddenly every hill stands out sharp and
definite; the scattered hawthorn bushes are distinct; the hills look
higher than before. From about the woods an impalpable bluish mistiness
that was there just now has been blown away. The yellow squares of
stubble--just cleared--far below are whiter and look drier. I think it is
the air that tints everything. This fresh stratum now sweeping over has
altered the appearance of the country and given me a new scene. The
invisible air, as if charged with colour, has spread another tone broadly
over the landscape. Omitting no detail, it has worked out afresh every
little bough of the scattered hawthorn bushes, and made each twig
distinct. It is the air that tints everything.

While I have been thinking, a flock of sheep has stolen quietly into the
space enclosed by the entrenchment. With the iron head of his crook
placed against his breast, and the handle aslant to the ground, the
shepherd leans against it, and looks down upon the reapers. He is a young
man, and has a bright intelligent expression on his features. Alone with
his sheep so many hours, he is glad of some one to talk to, and points
out to me the various places in view. The copses that cover the slopes of
the hills he calls "holts"; there are three or four within a short
distance. His crook is not a Pyecombe crook (for the best crooks used to
be made at Pyecombe, a little Down hamlet), but he has another, which was
made from a Pyecombe pattern. The village craftsman, whose shepherd's
crooks were sought for all along the South Downs, is no more, and he has
left no one able to carry on his work. He had an apprentice, but the
apprentice has taken to another craft, and cannot make crooks. The
Pyecombe crook has a curve or semicircle, and then opens straight; the
straight part starts at a tangent from the semicircle. How difficult it
is to describe so simple a matter as a shepherd's crook! In some way or
other this Pyecombe form is found more effective for capturing sheep, but
it is not so easy to make. The crook he held in his hand opened with an
elongated curve. It appeared very small beside the ordinary crooks; this,
he said, was an advantage, as it would hold a lamb. Another he showed me
had the ordinary hook; this was bought at Brighton. The curve was too
big, and a sheep could get its leg out; besides which, the iron was soft,
and when a sheep was caught the iron bent and enlarged, and so let the
sheep go. The handles were of hazel: one handle was straight, smooth, and
the best in appearance--but he said it was weak; the other handle, which
was crooked and rough-looking, was twice as strong. They used hazel rods
for handles--ash rods were apt to "fly," i.e. break.

Wages were now fifteen shillings a week. The "farm hands"--elsewhere
labourers--had fifteen shillings a week, and paid one shilling and
sixpence a week for their cottages. The new cottages that had been built
were two shillings and sixpence a week. They liked the old cottages best,
not only because they were cheaper, but because they had larger gardens
attached. It seemed that the men were fairly satisfied with their
earnings; just then, of course, they were receiving much more for harvest
work, such as tying up after the reaping machine at seven shillings and
sixpence per acre. Clothes were the heaviest item of expenditure,
especially where there was a family and the children were not old enough
to earn anything. Except that he said "wid" for with--"wid" this, instead
of with this--he scarcely mispronounced a word, speaking as distinctly
and expressing himself as clearly as any one could possibly do. The
briskness of manner, quick apprehension, and directness of answer showed
a well-trained mind. The Sussex shepherd on this lonely hill was quite
the equal of any man in his rank of life, and superior in politeness to
many who move in more civilised places. He left me to fetch some wattles,
called flakes in other counties; a stronger sort of hurdles. Most of the
reaping is now done by machine, still there were men cutting wheat by
hand at the foot of the hill. They call their reaphooks swaphooks, or
swophooks, and are of opinion that although the machine answers well and
clears the ground quickly when the corn stands up, if it is beaten down
the swaphook is preferable. The swaphook is the same as the fagging-hook
of other districts. Every hawthorn bush now bears its red berries, or
haws; these are called "hog-hazels." In the west they are called
"peggles." "Sweel" is an odd Sussex word, meaning to singe linen. People
who live towards the hills (which are near the coast) say that places
farther inland are more "uperds "--up the country--up towards Tunbridge,
for instance.

The grasshoppers sang merrily round me as I sat on the sward; the warm
sun and cloudless sky and the dry turf pleased them. Though cloudless,
the wind rendered the warmth pleasant, so that the sunbeams, from which
there was no shade, were not oppressive. The grasshoppers sang, the wind
swept through the grass and swung the harebells, the "drowsy hum" of the
threshing engine rose up from the plain; the low slumberous melody of
harvest time floated in the air. An hour had gone by imperceptibly before
I descended the slope to Clematis Lane. Out in the stubble where the
wheat had just been cut, down amongst the dry short stalks of straw, were
the light-blue petals of the grey field veronica. Almost the very first
of field flowers in the earliest days of spring, when the rain drives
over the furrow, and hail may hap at any time, here it was blooming again
in the midst of the harvest. Two scenes could scarcely be more dissimilar
than the wet and stormy hours of the early year, and the dry, hot time of
harvest; the pale blue veronica, with one white petal, flourished in
both, true and faithful. The gates beside the lane were not gates at all,
but double draw-bars framed together, so that the gate did not open on a
hinge, but had to be drawn out of the mortices. Looking over one of these
grey and lichened draw-bars in a hazel hedge there were the shocks of
wheat standing within the field, and on them a flock of rooks helping
themselves freely.

Lower in the valley, where there was water, the tall willow-herbs stood
up high as the hedges. On the banks of a pool water-plantains had sent up
stalks a yard high, branched, and each branch bearing its three-petalled
flower. In a copse near the stems of cow-parsnip stood quite seven feet,
drawn up by the willow bushes--these great plants are some of the largest
that grow in the country. Goatsbeard grew by the wayside; it is like the
dandelion, but has dark spots in the centre of the disc, and the flower
shuts at noon. The wild carrots were forming their "birds' nests"--so
soon as the flowering is over the umbel closes into the shape of a cup or
bird's nest. The flower of the wild carrot is white; it is made up of
numerous small separate florets on an umbel, and in the centre of these
tiny florets is a deep crimson one. Getting down towards the sea and the
houses now I found a shrub of henbane by the dusty road, dusty itself,
grey-green, and draggled; I call it a shrub, though a plant because of
its shrub-like look. The flowers were over--they are a peculiar colour,
dark and green veined and red, there is no exact term for it, but you may
know the plant by the leaves, which, if crushed, smell like those of the
black currant. This is one of the old English medicinal plants still in
use. The figs were ripening fast in an orchard; the fig trees are
frequently grown between apple trees, which shelter them, and some of the
fruit was enclosed in muslin bags to protect it. The fig orchards along
the coast suggest thoughts of Italy and the ancient Roman galleys which
crossed the sea to the Sussex ports. There is a curious statement in a
classic author, to the effect that a letter written by Julius Caesar,
when in Britain, on the Kalends of September, reached Rome on the fourth
day before the Kalends of October, showing how long a letter was being
carried from the South Coast to the centre of Italy, nineteen centuries
ago.




NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON

"As wild as a hawk" is a proverbial comparison, but kestrels venture into
the outskirts of Brighton, and even right over the town. Not long since
one was observed hovering above a field which divides part of Brighton
from Hove. The bird had hardly settled himself and obtained his balance,
when three or four rooks who were passing deliberately changed their
course to attack him. Moving with greater swiftness, the kestrel escaped
their angry but clumsy assaults; still they drove him from the spot, and
followed him eastwards over the town till out of sight--now wheeling
round, and now doing their utmost to rise higher and get the advantage of
him. Kestrels appear rather numerous in this vicinity. Those who have
driven round Brighton and Hove must have noticed the large stables which
have been erected for the convenience of gentlemen residing in streets
where stabling at the rear of the house is impracticable. Early in the
year a kestrel began to haunt one of these large establishments,
notwithstanding that it was much frequented, carriages driving in and out
constantly, hunters taken to and fro, and in despite of the neighbourhood
being built over with villas. There was a piece of waste ground by the
building where, on a little tree, the hawk perched day after clay. Then,
beating round, he hovered over the gardens of the district, often above
the public roads and over a large tennis lawn. His farthest sweep seemed
to be to the Sussex County Cricket field and then back again. Day after
day he went his rounds for weeks together, through the stormy times of
the early months, passing several times a day, almost as regularly as the
postman. He showed no fear, hovering close to the people in the roads or
working in their gardens. All his motions could be observed with
facility--the mode of hovering, which he accomplished easily, whether
there was a gale or a perfect calm; indeed, his ways could be noted as
well as if it had been by the side of the wildest copse. One morning he
perched on a chimney; the house was not occupied, but the next to it was,
and there were builders' workmen engaged on the opposite side of the
road; so that the wild hawk, if unmolested, would soon become
comparatively tame. When the season became less rigorous, and the
breeding time approached, the kestrel was seen no more; having flown for
the copses between the Downs or in the Weald.

The power of hovering is not so wonderful as that of soaring, which the
hawks possess, but which is also exhibited by seagulls. On a March
morning two gulls came up from the sea, and as they neared the Downs
began to soar. It was necessary to fix the gaze on one, as the eyes
cannot follow two soaring birds at once. This gull, having spread his
wings wide, swept up the dean, or valley, with great speed, and, turning
a large circle, rose level with the hill. Round again he came, rising
spirally--a spiral with a diameter varying from a furlong to a quarter of
a mile, sometimes wider--and was now high overhead. Turn succeeded turn,
up, up, and this without a single movement of the wings, which were held
extended and rigid. The edge of the wing on the outer side was inclined
to the horizon--one wing elevated, the other depressed--as the bird
leaned inwards like a train going round a curve. The plane of the wings
glided up the air as, with no apparent diminution of speed from friction,
the bird swiftly ascended. Fourteen times the bird swept round, never so
much as moving his wings, till now the gaze could no longer distinguish
his manner of progress. The white body was still perceptible, but the
wings were indistinct. Up to that height the gull had not assisted his
ascent by flapping, or striking the air in any way. The original impulse,
and some hitherto unexplained elasticity or property of air, had sufficed
to raise him, in apparent defiance of the retardation of friction, and of
the drag of gravitation. This power of soaring is the most wonderful of
the various problems of flight being accomplished without effort; and
yet, according to our preconceived ideas, there must be force somewhere
to cause motion. There was a moderate air moving at the time, but it must
be remembered that if a wind assists one way it retards the other.
[Footnote: See the paper on "Birds Climbing the Air"] Hawks can certainly
soar in the calmest weather.

One day I saw a weasel cross a road in Hove, close to a terrace of
houses.

It is curious that a seagull can generally be observed opposite the
Aquarium; when there is no seagull elsewhere along the whole Brighton
front there is often one there. Young gulls occasionally alight on the
roof, or are blown there. Once now and then a porpoise may be seen
sunning himself off a groyne; barely dipping himself, and rolling about
at the surface, the water shines like oil as it slips off his back.

The Brighton rooks are house birds, like sparrows, and perch on the roofs
or chimneys--there are generally some on the roof of the Eglise Reformee
Francaise, a church situated in a much-frequented part. It is amusing to
see a black rook perched on a red tile chimney, with the smoke coming up
around him, and darkening with soot his dingy plumage. They take every
scrap thrown out, like sparrows, and peck bones if they find them. The
builders in Brighton appear to have somewhat overshot the mark, to judge
from the number of empty houses, and, indeed, it is currently reported
that it will be five years before the building speculation recovers
itself. Upon these empty houses, the hoardings, and scaffold-poles, the
rooks perch exactly as if they were trees in a hedgerow, waiting with
comic gravity to pounce on anything in the gardens or on the lawns. They
are quite aware when it is Sunday--on week-days they keep at a fair
distance from workmen; on Sundays they drop down in places where at other
times they do not dare to venture, so that a glove might be thrown out of
window among them. In winter and spring there are rooks everywhere; as
summer advances, most leave the town for the fields.

A marked sign of spring in Brighton is the return of the wheatears; they
suddenly appear in the waste places by the houses in the first few days
of April. Wheatears often run a considerable distance on the sward very
swiftly, usually stopping on some raised spot of the turf. Meadow-pipits
are another spring bird here; any one going up the Dyke Road in early
spring will observe a little brown bird singing in the air much like a
lark, but more feebly. He only rises to a certain height, and then
descends in a slanting direction, singing, to the ground. The
meadow-pipit is, apparently, uncertain where he shall come down,
wandering and irregular on his course. Many of them finish their song in
the gardens of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, which seem to be a refuge
to birds. At least, the thrushes sing there sweetly--yellowhammers,
too--on the high wall. There is another resort of birds, opposite the
Convent, on the Stanford Estate, on which persons are warned not to shoot
or net small birds. A little shrubbery there in April and May is full of
thrushes, blackbirds, and various finches, happily singing, and busy at
their nests. Here the birds sing both sides of the highway, despite the
reproach that Brighton is bare of trees; they pass from the shrubbery to
and from the Convent gardens.

It is to be wished that these notices not to shoot or net small birds
were more frequently seen. Brighton is still a bird-catching centre, and
before the new close season commences acres of ground are covered with
the nets of the bird-catchers. Pity they could not be confined a little
while in the same manner as they confine their miserable feathery victims
(in cages just to fit the bird, say six inches square) in cells where
movement or rest would be alike impossible. Yet goldfinches are still to
be seen close to the town; they are fond of the seeds which they find
wherever there is a waste place, and on the slopes of unfinished roads.
Each unoccupied house, and many occupied, has its brood of starlings; a
starling the other day was taking insects from the surface of a sheep
pond on the hill, flying out to the middle of the pond and snatching the
insects from the water During the long weeks of rain and stormy weather
in the spring of 1883, the Downs looked dreary indeed; open, unsheltered,
the grass so short as scarcely to be called grass wet and slippery. But a
few glimpses of sunshine soon brought a change. Where the furze bushes
had been cut down, the stems of furze began to shoot, looking at a little
distance like moss on the ground. Among these there were broad violet
patches--scentless violets, nothing to gather, but pleasant to
see--colouring the earth. Presently the gorse flowered, miles of it, and
the willow wrens sang plaintively among it. The brightest bird on the
Downs was then the stonechat. Perched on a dead thistle, his blackest of
black heads, the white streak by his neck, and the brilliance of his
colouring contrasted with the yellow gorse around. In the hedges on the
northern slopes of the Downs, towards the Weald, or plain, the wayfaring
tree grows in large shrubs, blooming among the thorns.

The banks by Brighton in early spring are purple with the flowers of
ground ivy, which flowers with exceptional freedom. One bank, or waste
spot, that was observed was first of all perfectly purple with ground
ivy; by degrees these flowers faded, and the spot became a beautiful blue
with veronica, or bird's-eye; then, again, these disappeared, and up came
the larger daisies on stalks a foot high, whose discs touched each other
from end to end of the bank. Here was a succession of flowers as if
designed, one taking the other's place. Meantime the trifolium appeared
like blood spilt among the grass.

The thin, chalky soil of Sussex is singularly favourable to poppies and
charlock--the one scarlet, the other a sharp yellow; they cover acres.
Wild pansies flowered on the hillside fallows, high up among the wind,
where the notes of the cuckoo came faint from the wood in the Weald
beneath. The wind threw back the ringing notes, but every now and then,
as the breeze ebbed, they came, having travelled a full mile against the
current of air. There is no bird with so powerful a voice as the cuckoo;
his cry can be heard almost as far as a clarion. The wild pansies were
very thick--little yellow petals streaked with black lines. In a western
county the cottagers call them "Loving Idols," which may perhaps be a
distortion of the name they bore in Shakespeare's time--"Love in
Idleness." It appears as if the rabbits on the chalk are of a rather
greyish hue, perceptibly less sandy in colour than those living in
meadows on low ground. Though Brighton is bare of trees, there is a large
wood at a short distance. It is principally of beech. In this particular
wood there is a singular absence of the jays which elsewhere make so much
noise. Early in the spring there did not seem a jay in it. They make
their appearance in the nesting season and are then trapped. A thrush's
nest with eggs in it having been found, a little platform of sticks is
built before the nest and a trap placed on it. The jay is so fond of eggs
he cannot resist these; he alights on the platform in front of the nest,
and is so captured. The bait of an egg will generally succeed in drawing
a jay to his destruction. A good deal of poaching goes on about Brighton
at Christmas time, when the coverts are full of game.

The Downs as they trend along the coast now recede and now approach, now
sink in deans, then rise abruptly, topped with copses which, like Lancing
Clump, are visible many miles both at sea and on land. Between them and
the beach there lies a rich alluvial belt, narrow and flat, much of which
appears to have been reclaimed by drainage from the condition of marsh,
and which, in fact, presents a close similitude to the fens. Here, in the
dykes, the aquatic grasses reach a great height, and the flowering rush
grows. It is said that this land is sought after among agriculturists,
and that those who occupy it have escaped better than the majority from
the pressure of bad seasons. Somewhat away from the present coast-line,
where the hills begin--perhaps the sea came as far inland once--may be
found ancient places, still ports, with histories running back into the
mythic period. Passing through such a place on a sunny day in the earlier
part of the year, the extreme quiet and air of silence were singularly
opposite to the restlessness of the great watering-place near. It was but
a few steps out into the wooded country. Yellow wallflowers grew along
the high wall, and flowered against the sky; swallows flew to and fro the
warm space sheltered from the wind, beneath them. In the lane a blackbird
was so occupied among the arums at the roots of the trees that he did not
stir till actually obliged. Blackbirds and thrushes are fond of searching
about where the arums grow thickest. In the park a clump of tall aspens
gleamed like silk in the sunshine. The calls of moorhens came up from a
lake in a deep valley near, beeches grow down the steep slope to the edge
of the water, and the wind which rippled it drew in a strong draught up
the hill. From that height the glance saw to the bottom of the clear
water, to which the waves and the wind gave a translucent green. The
valley winds northward, curving like a brook, and in the trough a narrow
green band of dark grass follows the windings, a pathlike ribbon as
deeply coloured as a fairy ring, and showing between the slopes of pale
turf. On this side are copses of beech, and on that of fir; the fir
copses are encircled by a loose hedge of box, fading and yellowish, while
the larch tops were filled with sweet and tender green. Like the masts
and yards of a ship, which are gradually hidden as the sails are set, so
these green sails unfurling concealed the tall masts and taper branches
of the fir. Afar the great hills were bare, wind-swept and dry. The
glass-green river wound along the plain, and the sea bloomed blue under
the sun, blue by the distant shore, darkening like a, level cloud where a
dim ship marked the horizon. A blue sky requires greensward and green
woods--the sward is pale and the woods are slow; the cuckoo calls for his
leaves.

Farther along the edge of the valley the beeches thicken, and the turf is
covered by the shrunken leaves of last year. Empty hulls of beechmast
crunch under foot, the brown beech leaves have drifted a foot deep
against the trunk of a felled tree. Beech leaves lie at rest in the cover
of furze, sheltered from the wind; suddenly a little cloud of earth rises
like dust as a startled cock pheasant scrambles on his wings with a
scream. A hen follows, and rises steadily in a long-drawn slanting line
till near the tops of the beeches, then rockets sharp up over the highest
branches, and descends in a wide sweeping curve along the valley. In the
glade among the beeches the furze has grown straight up ten feet high,
like, sapling trees, and flowers at the top, golden bloom on a dry pole.
There are more pheasants in the furze, so that, not to disturb them, it
is best to walk round and not enter it. Every now and then there is a
curious, half-finished note among the trees--yuc, yuc. This great
hawthorn has a twisted stem; the wood winds round itself in a spiral. The
bole of a beech in the sunshine h spotted like a trout by the separate
shadows of its first young leaves. Tall bushes--almost trees--of
blackthorn are in full white flower; the dark, leafless boughs make it
appear the whiter. Among the blackthorn several tits are busy, searching
about on the twigs, and pecking into the petals; calling loudly as they
do so. A willow-wren is peering into the bloom too, but silent for the
moment. The blackthorn is much lichened, the lichen which is built into
the domed nest of the long-tailed titmouse. Yuc--yuc, again. Stalks of
spurge, thickening towards the top, and then surrounded with leaves, and
above these dull yellow-green flowers, grow in shrub-like bunches in more
open ground. Among the shrunken leaves on the turf here and there are the
white flowers of the barren strawberry. A green woodpecker starts from a
tree, and can be watched between the trunks as he flies; his bright
colour marks him. Presently, on rounding some furze, he rises again, this
time from the ground, and goes over the open glade; flying, the green
woodpecker appears a larger bird than would be supposed if seen when
still. He has been among the beeches all the time, and it was his "Yuc,
yuc" which we heard. Where the woodpecker is heard and seen, there the
woods are woods and wild--a sense of wildness accompanies his presence.

Across the valley the straight shadows of firs rise up the slope, all
drawn in the same direction, parallel on the sward. Far in a hollow of
the rounded hill a herd of deer are resting; the plain lies beneath them,
and beyond it the sea. Though they rest in a hollow the green hill is
open above and below them; they do not dread the rifle, but if they did
they would be safe there. Returning again through the woods, there are
some bucks lying on a pleasant sunny slope. Almost too idle to rise, they
arch their backs, and stretch their legs, as much as to say, Why trouble
us? The wind rushes through the trees, and draws from them strange
sounds, now a groan, now almost a shriek, as the boughs grind against
each other and wear the bark away. From a maple a twisted ivy basket
hangs filled with twigs, leaves, and tree dust, big as three rooks'
nests. Only recently a fine white-tailed eagle was soaring over the
woods, he may have followed the line of the sea down from the Hebrides.
Up from the sea comes the wind, drawing swifter between the beech trunks,
resting a little in the sunny glades, On again into the woods. The
glass-green river yonder coloured by the wind runs on seaward, there are
thin masts of ships visible at its mouth miles away, the wind whistles in
their shrouds; beyond the blue by the shore, far, far distant on the
level cloud, the dim ship has sailed along the horizon. It dries the pale
grass, and rustles the restless shrunken leaves on the ground; it dries
the grey lichen on the beech trunks; it swings the fledglings in the
rooks' nests, and carries the ringdove on a speedier wing. Blackbirds
whistle all around, the woods are full of them; willow-wrens plaintively
sing in the trees; other birds call--the dry wind mingles their notes. It
is a hungry wind--it makes a wanderer as hungry as Robin Hood; it drives
him back to the houses, and there by a doorstep lies a heap of
buck's-horns thrown down like an armful of wood.




SEA, SKY, AND DOWN

In the cloudless January sky the sun at noonday appears high above the
southern horizon, and there is a broad band of sky between it and the
line of the sea. This sense of the sun's elevation is caused by the level
plain of water, which affords no contrast. Inland the hills rise up, and
even at midday the sun in winter does not seem much above their ridges.
But here by the shore the sun hangs high, and does not look as if he
descended so low in his winter curve. There is little wind, and the
wavelets swing gently rather than roll, illumined both in their hollows
and on their crests with a film of silver. Three or four miles away a
vessel at anchor occasionally sways, and at each movement flashes a
bright gleam from her wet side like a mirror. White gulls hawk to and fro
by the strand, darting on floating fragments and rising again; their
plumage is snowy white in the sunshine. Brown nets lie on the pebbles;
brown nets are stretched from the mastheads of the smacks to the
sea-wall; brown and deeply wrinkled sails are hoisted to dry in the sun
and air. The broad red streaks on the smacks' sides stand out distinctly
among the general pitchy hues of gunwales and great coils of rope. Men in
dull yellow tan frocks are busy round about among them, some mending nets
some stooping over a boat turned bottom upwards, upon which a patch is
being placed. It needs at least three or four men to manage this patch
properly. These tan frocks vary from a dull yellow to a copperish red
colour. A golden vane high overhead points to the westward, and the
dolphin, with open mouth, faces the light breeze.

Under the groynes there is shadow as in summer; once and again the sea
runs up and breaks on the beach, and the foam, white as the whitest milk,
hisses as it subsides among the pebbles; it effervesces and bubbles at
the brim of the cup of the sea. Farther along the chalk cliffs stand up
clear and sharp, the green sea beneath, and the blue sky above them.
There is a light and colour everywhere, the least fragment of colour is
brought out, even the worn red tiles washed smooth by the tides and
rolled over and over among the pebbles, the sea gleams, and there is
everything of summer but the heat. Reflected in the plate-glass windows
of the street the sea occupies the shop front, covering over the golden
bracelets and jewellery with a moving picture of the silvery waves. The
day is lengthened by the light, and dark winter driven away, till, the
sun's curve approaching the horizon, misty vapours begin to thicken in
the atmosphere where they had not been suspected. The tide is out, and
for miles the foam runs in on the level sands, forming a long succession
of graceful curves marked with a white edge.

As the sun sinks, the wet sands are washed with a brownish yellow, the
colour of ripe wheat if it could be supposed liquid. The sunset, which
has begun with pale hues, flushes over a rich violet, soon again overlaid
with orange, and succeeded in its turn by a deep red glow--a glow which
looks the deeper the more it is gazed at, like a petal of peony. There
are no fair faces in the street now, they are all brunettes, fair
complexions and dark skins are alike tinted by the sunset; they are all
swarthy. On the sea a dull redness reaches away and is lost in the vapour
on the horizon; eastwards great vapours, tinged rosy, stand up high in
the sky, and seem to drift inland, carrying the sunset with them;
presently the atmosphere round the houses is filled with a threatening
light, like a great fire reflected over the housetops. It fades, and
there is nothing left but a dark cloud at the western horizon, tinted
blood-red along its upper edge. Next morning the sun rises, a ball of
orange amid streaks of scarlet.

But sometimes the sunset takes other order than this, and after the
orange there appears a rayed scarlet crown, such as one sees on old
coins--rays of scarlet shoot upward from a common centre above where the
sun went down. Sometimes, instead of these brilliant hues, there is the
most delicate shading of pearly greys and nameless silver tints, such
tints as might be imagined were the clouds like feathers, the art of
which is to let the under hue shine through the upper layer of the
plumage. Though not so gaudy or at first so striking, these pearl-greys,
and silvers, and delicate interweaving of tints are really as wonderful,
being graduated and laid on with a touch no camel's hair can approach.
Sometimes, again, the sunset shows a burnished sky, like the surface of
old copper burnt or oxidised--the copper tinted with rose, or with rose
and violet. During the prevalence of the scarlet and orange hues, the
moon, then young, shining at the edge of the sunset, appeared faintly
green and people remarked how curious a green moon looked on a blue sky,
for it was just where the sunset vapour melted into the upper sky. At the
same moment the gas-lamps burned green--rows and rows of pale green
lights. As the sunset faded both the moon and gas-lamps took their proper
hue; hence it appeared as if the change of colour were due to contrast.
The gas-lamps had looked greenish several evenings before the new moon
shone, and in their case there can be no doubt the tint was contrast
merely. One night, some hours after sunset, and long after the last trace
of it had disappeared, the moon was sailing through light white clouds,
which only partly concealed her, and was surrounded by the ordinary
prismatic halo. But outside this halo there was a green circle, a broad
green band, very distinct--a pale emerald green. Beautiful and
interesting as these sunsets have been, I cannot subscribe to the opinion
that they surpass all that have been observed; for I distinctly remember
sunsets equally brilliant, and some even more so, which occurred not so
very long ago. To those who are in the habit of observing out-of-door
phenomena a beautiful sunset is by no means uncommon.

Sometimes the sea disappears under the haze of the winter's day: it is
fine, but hazy, and from the hills, looking southwards, the sea seems
gone, till, the sun breaking out, two or three horizontal streaks
reflected suddenly reveal its surface. Another time the reflection of the
sun's rays takes the form of a gigantic and exaggerated hour-glass; by
the shore the reflection widens out, narrows as it recedes to a mere
path, and again at the horizon widens and fills a mile or more. Then at
the horizon the lighted sea seems raised above the general level. Rain is
approaching, and then by the beach the sea becomes yellowish, beyond that
green, and a hard blue at the horizon; there is one lovely streak of
green on the right; in front a broad spot of sunlight where the clouds
have parted. The wind sings, and a schooner is working rapidly out to
windward for more room. During changeable weather the sky between the
clouds occasionally takes a pale yellow hue, like that of the tinted
paper used for drawing. This colour is opaque, and evidently depends upon
the presence of thin vapour. It is seen when the wind is in the act of
changing its direction, and the clouds, arrested in their march, are
thrown out of rank. That which was the side becomes the rear of the
cloud, and is banked up by the sudden pressure. Clouds coming in from the
sea are met with a land wind, and so diverted. The effect of mist on the
sea in the dark winter days is to increase distances, so that a ship at
four or five miles appears hull down, and her shadowy sails move in
vapour almost as thick as the canvas. At evening there is no visible
sunset, but presently the whole sky, dull and gloomy, is suffused with a
redness, not more in one part than another, but over the entire heavens.
So in the clouded mornings, a deep red hue fills the whole dome.

But if the sun rises clear, the rays light up the yellow sand of the
quarries inland, the dark brown ploughed fields, and the black copses
where many a bud is sleeping and waiting for the spring. A haze lies
about the Downs and softens their smooth outline as in summer, if you can
but face the bleak wind which never rests up there. The outline starts on
the left hand fairly distinguished against the sky. As it sweeps round,
it sinks, and is lost in the bluish haze; gradually it rises again, and
is visible on the right, where the woods stand leafless on the ridge. Or
the vapour settles down thicker, and the vast expanse becomes gloomy in
broad day. The formless hills loom round about, the roads and marks of
civilisation seem blotted out, it may be some absolute desert for aught
that appears. An immense hollow filled with mist lies underneath.
Presently the wind drifts the earth-cloud along, and there by a dark
copse are three or four horsemen eagerly seeking a way through the
plantation. They are two miles distant, but as plainly visible as if you
could touch them. By-and-by one finds a path, and in single file the
troop rides into the wood. On the other side there is a long stretch of
open ploughed field, and about the middle of it little white dots close
together, sweeping along as if the wind drove them. Horsemen are
galloping on the turf at the edge of the arable, which is doubtless heavy
going. The troop that has worked through the wood labours hard to
overtake; the vapour follows again, and horsemen and hounds are lost in
the abyss.

On a ridge closer at hand, and above the mist, stand two conical wheat
ricks sharply defined--all that a draughtsman could seize on. Still, even
in winter there is about the hills the charm of outline, and the
uncertain haze produces some of the effects of summer, but it is
impossible to stay and admire, the penetrating wind will permit of
nothing except hard exercise. Looking back now and then, the distant
hollows are sometimes visible and sometimes filled; great curtains of
mist sweep along illumined by the sunlight above them; the woods are now
brown, now dark, and now faintly blue, as the light changes. Over the
range-and down in the valley where the hursts or woods are situated,
surrounded by meads and cornfields, there are other notes of colour to be
found. In the leafless branches of the oak sometimes the sunshine plays
on the bark of the smaller boughs, and causes a sense of light and colour
among them. The slender boughs of the birch, too, reflect the sunshine as
if polished. Beech leaves still adhere to the lower branches, spots of
bright brown among the grey and ash tint of the underwood. If a
woodpecker passes, his green plumage gleams the more from the absence of
the abundant foliage which partly conceals even him in summer. The
light-coloured wood-pigeons show distinctly against the dark firs; the
golden crest of the tiny wren is to be seen in the furze or bramble.

All broader effects of colour must in winter be looked for in the
atmosphere, as the light changes, as the mist passes, as the north wind
brings down a blackness, or the gust dries up the furrow; as the colour
of the air alters, for it is certain that the air is often full of
colour. To the atmosphere we must look for all broader effects. Specks of
detail may be sometimes discerned, one or two in a walk, as the white
breasts of the lapwings on the dark ploughed ridges; yellow oat-straw by
the farm, still retaining the golden tint of summer; if fortunate, a blue
kingfisher by the brook, and always dew flashing emerald and ruby.





JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOODS

The lost leaves measure our years; they are gone as the days are gone,
and the bare branches silently speak of a new year, slowly advancing to
its buds, its foliage, and fruit. Deciduous trees associate with human
life as this yew never can. Clothed in its yellowish-green needles, its
tarnished green, it knows no hope or sorrow; it is indifferent to winter,
and does not look forward to summer. With their annual loss of leaves,
and renewal, oak and elm and ash and beech seem to stand by us and to
share our thoughts. There is no wind at the edge of the wood, and the few
flakes of snow that fall from the overcast sky flutter as they drop, now
one side higher and then the other, as the leaves did in the still hours
of autumn. The delicacy of the outer boughs of the great trees visible
against the dark background of cloud is as beautiful in its own way as
the massed foliage of summer. Each slender bough is drawn out to a line;
line follows line as shade grows under the pencil, but each of these
lines is separate. Great boles of beech, heavy timber at the foot, thus
end at their summits in the lightest and most elegant pencilling. Where
the birches are tall, sometimes the number and closeness of these bare
sprays causes a thickening almost as if there were leaves there. The
leaves, in fact, when they come, conceal the finish of the trees; they
give colour, but they hide the beautiful structure under them. Each tree
at a distance is recognisable by its particular lines; the ash, for
instance, grows with its own marked curve.

Some flakes of snow have remained on this bough of spruce, pure white on
dull green. Sparingly dispersed, the snow can be seen falling far ahead
between the trunks; indeed, the white dots appear to increase the
distance the eye can penetrate; it sees farther because there is
something to catch the glance. Nothing seems left for food in the woods
for bird or animal. Some ivy berries and black privet berries remain, a
few haws may be found; for the rest, it is gone; the squirrels have had
the nuts, the acorns were taken by the jays, rooks, and pheasants.
Bushels of acorns, too, were collected by hand as food for the fallow
deer in the park. A great fieldfare rises, like a lesser pigeon;
fieldfares often haunt the verge of woods, while the redwing thrushes go
out into the meadows. It can scarcely be doubted that both these birds
come over to escape the keener cold of the winters in Norway, or that the
same cause drives the blackbirds hither. In spring we listen to Norwegian
songs--the blackbird and the thrush that please us so much, if not
themselves of Scandinavian birth, have had a Scandinavian origin. Any one
walking about woods like these in January can understand how, where there
are large flocks of birds, they must find the pressure of numbers through
the insufficiency of food. They go then to seek a warmer climate and more
to eat; more particularly probably for sustenance.

The original and simple theory that the majority of birds migrate for
food or warmth is not overthrown by modern observations. That appears to
be the primary impulse, though others may be traced or reasonably
imagined. To suppose, as has been put forward, that birds are endowed
with a migratory instinct for the express purpose of keeping down their
numbers, in order, that is, that they may perish in crossing the sea, is
really too absurd for serious consideration. If that were the end in
view, it would be most easily obtained by keeping them at home, where
snow would speedily starve them. On the contrary, it will appear to any
one who walks about woods and fields that migration is essential to the
preservation of these creatures. By migration, in fact, the species is
kept in existence, and room is found for life. Apart from the necessity
of food, movement and change is one of the most powerful agencies in
renewing health. This we see in our own experience; the condition of the
air is especially important, and it is well within rcasonable supposition
that some birds and animals may wish to avoid certain states of
atmosphere. There is, too, the question of moulting and change of
plumage, and the possibility that this physiological event may influence
the removal to a different climate. Birds migrate principally for food
and warmth; secondly, on account of the pressure of numbers (for in good
seasons they increase very fast); thirdly, for the sake of health;
fourthly, for sexual reasons; fifthly, from the operation of a kind of
prehistoric memory; sixthly, from choice. One or other of these causes
will explain almost every case of migration.

Birds are lively and intellectual, imaginative and affectionate
creatures, and all their movements are not dictated by mere necessity.
They love the hedge and bush where they were born, they return to the
same tree, or the same spot under the eave. On the other hand, they like
to roam about the fields and woods, and some of them travel long
distances during the day. When the pleasurable cares of the nest are
concluded, it is possible that they may in some cases cross the sea
solely for the solace of change. Variety of food is itself a great
pleasure. By prehistoric memory is meant the unconscious influence of
ancient habit impressed upon the race in times when the conformation of
land and sea and the conditions of life were different. No space is left
for a mysterious agency; migration is purely natural, and acts for the
general preservation. Try to put yourself in a bird's place, and you will
see that migration is very natural indeed. If at some future period of
the world's history men should acquire the art of flying, there can be no
doubt that migration would become the custom, and whole nations would
change their localities. Man has, indeed, been always a migratory animal.
History is little beyond the record of migrations, how one race moved on
and overcame the race in front of it. In ancient days lots were cast as
to who should migrate, and those chosen by this conscription left their
homes that the rest remaining might have room and food. Checking the
attempted migration of the Helvetii was the beginning of Caesar's
exploits. What men do only at intervals birds do frequently, having
greater freedom of movement.

Who can doubt that the wild fowl come south because the north is frozen
over? The Laplander and the reindeer migrate together; the Tartars
migrate all the year through, crossing the steppes in winding and devious
but fixed paths, paths settled for each family, and kept without a map,
though invisible to strangers. It is only necessary to watch the common
sparrow. In spring his merry chirp and his few notes of song are heard on
the roof or in the garden; here he spends his time till the broods are
reared and the corn is ripe. Immediately he migrates into the fields. By
degrees he is joined by those left behind to rear second broods, and at
last the stubble is crowded with sparrows, such flocks no one would
believe possible unless they had seen them. He has migrated for food, for
his food changes with the season, being mainly insects in spring, and
grain and seeds in autumn. Something may, I venture to think, in some
cases of migration, be fairly attributed to the influence of a desire for
change, a desire springing from physiological promptings for the
preservation of health. I am personally subject twice a year to the
migratory impulse. I feel it in spring and autumn, say about March, when
the leaves begin to appear, and again as the corn is carried, and most
strongly as the fields are left in stubble. I have felt it every year
since boyhood, often so powerfully as to be quite unable to resist it. Go
I must, and go I do, somewhere; if I do not I am soon unwell. The general
idea of direction is southerly, both spring and autumn; no doubt the
reason is because this is a northern country.

Some little green stays on the mounds where the rabbits creep and nibble
the grasses. Cinquefoil remains green though faded, and wild parsley the
freshest looking of all; plantain leaves are found under shelter of
brambles, and the dumb nettles, though the old stalks are dead, have
living leaves at the ground. Grey-veined ivy trails along, here and there
is a frond of hart's-tongue fern, though withered at the tip, and
greenish grey lichen grows on the exposed stumps of trees. These together
give a green tint to the mound, which is not so utterly devoid of colour
as the season of the year might indicate. Where they fail, brown brake
fern fills the spaces between the brambles; and in a moist spot the
bunches of rushes are composed half of dry stalks, and half of green.
Stems of willow-herb, four feet high, still stand, and tiny long-tailed
tits perch sideways on them. Above, on the bank, another species of
willow-herb has died down to a short stalk, from which springs a living
branch, and at its end is one pink flower. A dandelion is opening on the
same sheltered bank; farther on the gorse is sprinkled with golden spots
of bloom. A flock of greenfinches starts from the bushes, and their
colour shows against the ruddy wands of the osier-bed over which they
fly. The path winds round the edge of the wood, where a waggon track goes
up the hill; it is deeply grooved at the foot of the hill. These tracks
wear deeply into the chalk just where the ascent begins. The chalk
adheres to the shoes like mortar, and for some time after one has left it
each footstep leaves a white mark on the turf. On the ridge the low trees
and bushes have an outline like the flame of a candle in a draught--the
wind has blown them till they have grown fixed in that shape. In an oak
across the ploughed field a flock of wood-pigeons have settled; on the
furrows there are chaffinches, and larks rise and float a few yards
farther away. The snow has ceased, and though there is no wind on the
surface, the clouds high above have opened somewhat, not sufficient for
the sun to shine, but to prolong the already closing afternoon a few
minutes. If the sun shines to-morrow morning the lark will soar and sing,
though it is January, and the quick note of the chaffinch will be heard
as he perches on the little branches projecting from the trunks of trees
below the great boughs. Thrushes sing every mild day in December and
January, entirely irrespective of the season, also before rain.

A curious instance of a starling having a young brood at this time of the
year, recently recorded, seems to suggest that birds are not really
deceived by the passing mildness of a few days, but are obliged to
prepare nests, finding themselves in a condition to require them. The
cause, in short, is physiological, and not the folly of the bird. This
starling had had two previous broods, one in October, and now again in
December-January. The starling was not, therefore, deceived by the chance
of mild weather; her own bodily condition led her to the nest, and had
she been a robin or thrush she would have built one instead of resorting
to a cranny. It is certain that individuals among birds and animals do
occasionally breed at later periods than is usual for the generality of
their species. Exceptionally prolific individuals among birds continue to
breed into the winter. They are not egregiously deceived any more than we
are by a mild interval; the nesting is caused by their individual
temperament.

The daylight has lingered on longer than expected, but now the gloom of
the short January evening is settling down fast in the wood. The silent
and motionless trees rise out of a mysterious shadow, which fills up the
spaces between their trunks. Only above, where their delicate outer
branches are shown against the dark sky, is there any separation between
them. Somewhere in the deep shadow of the underwood a blackbird calls
"ching, ching" before he finally settles himself to roost. In the yew the
lesser birds are already quiet, sheltered by the evergreen spray; they
have also sought the ivy-grown trunks. "Twit, twit," sounds high overhead
as one or two belated little creatures, scarcely visible, pass quickly
for the cover of the furze on the hill. The short January evening is of
but a few minutes' duration; just now it was only dusky, and already the
interior of the wood is impenetrable to the glance. There rises a loud
though distant clamour of rooks and daws, who have restlessly moved in
their roost-trees. Darkness is almost on them, yet they cannot quite
settle. The cawing and dawing rises to a pitch, and then declines; the
wood is silent, and it is suddenly night.




BY THE EXE

The whortleberry bushes are almost as thick as the heather in places on
the steep, rocky hills that overlook the Exe. Feeding on these berries
when half ripe is said to make the heath poults thin (they are acid), so
that a good crop of whortleberries is not advantageous to the black game.
Deep in the hollow the Exe winds and bends, finding a crooked way among
the ruddy rocks. Sometimes an almost inaccessible precipice rises on one
shore, covered with firs and ferns, which no one can gather; while on the
other is a narrow but verdant strip of mead. Coming down in flood from
the moors the Exe will not wait to run round its curves, but rushes
across the intervening corner, and leaves behind, as it subsides, a mass
of stones, flat as slates or scales, destroying the grass. But the
fly-fisherman seeks the spot because the water is swift at the angle of
the stream and broken by a ledge of rock. He can throw up stream--the
line falls soft as silk on the slow eddy below the rock, and the fly is
drawn gently towards him across the current. When a natural fly
approaches the surface of running water, and flutters along just above
it, it encounters a light air, which flows in the same direction as the
stream. Facing this surface breeze, the fly cannot progress straight up
the river, but is carried sideways across it. This motion the artificial
fly imitates; a trout takes it, and is landed on the stones. He is not
half a pound, yet in the sunshine has all the beauty of a larger fish.
Spots of cochineal and gold dust, finely mixed together, dot his sides;
they are not red nor yellow exactly, as if gold dust were mixed with some
bright red. A line is drawn along his glistening greenish side, and
across this there are faintly marked lozenges of darker colour, so that
in swimming past he would appear barred. There are dark spots on the head
between the eyes, the tail at its lower and upper edges is pinkish; his
gills are bright scarlet. Proportioned and exquisitely shaped, he looks
like a living arrow, formed to shoot through the water. The delicate
little creature is finished in every detail, painted to the utmost
minutiae, and carries a wonderful store of force, enabling him to easily
surmount the rapids.

Exe and Earle are twin streams, parted only by a ridge of heather-grown
moor. The Earle rises near a place called Simons' Bath, about which there
is a legend recalling the fate of Captain Webb. There is a pool at
Simons' Bath, in which is a small whirlpool. The stream running in does
not seem of much strength; but the eddy is sufficient to carry a dog
down. By report the eddy is said to be unfathomable. A long time since a
man named Simons thought he could swim through the whirlpool, much as
Captain Webb thought he could float down the rapids of Niagara; only in
this case Simons relied on the insignificant character of the eddy. He
made the attempt, was sucked down and drowned, and hence the spot has
been since known as Simons' Bath. So runs the tradition in the
neighbourhood, varied in details by different narrators, but not so
apocryphal, perhaps, as the story of the two giants, or demons, who
amused themselves one day throwing stones, to see which could throw
farthest. Their stones were huge boulders; the first pitched his pebble
across the Bristol Channel into Wales; the second's foot slipped, and his
boulder dropped on Exmoor, where it is known as White Stones to this day.
The antiquarians refer Simons' Bath to one Sigmund, but the country-side
tradition declares it was named from a man who was drowned. Exe and Earle
presently mingle their streams by pleasant oak woods.

At the edge of one of these woods the trench, in the early summer, was
filled with ferns, so that, instead of thorns and brambles, the wood was
fenced with their green fronds. Among these ferns were some buttercups,
at least so they looked in passing; but a slight difference of appearance
induced me to stop, and on getting across the trench the buttercups were
found to be yellow Welsh poppies. The petals are larger than those of the
buttercup, and a paler yellow, without the metallic burnish of the
ranunculus. In the centre is the seed vessel, somewhat like an urn;
indeed, the yellow poppy resembles the scarlet field poppy, though
smaller in width of petal and much more local in habitat. So concealed
were the stalks by the ferns that the flowers appeared to grow on their
fronds. On the mounds grew corn marigolds, so brilliantly yellow that
they seemed to shine in the sunlight, and on a wall moth-mullein flowered
high above the foxgloves.

It was curious to hear the labouring people say, "There's the guckoo,"
when the cuckoo cried. They said he called "guckoo"; so cuckoo sounded to
their ears. There are numbers of birds of prey in the oak woods which
everywhere grow on the slopes of the Exmoor hills. The keeper who wishes
to destroy a whole brood of jays (which take the eggs of game) waits till
the young birds are fledged. He then catches one, or wounds it, and,
hiding himself in the bushes, pinches it till the bird cries "scaac,
scaac." At the sound the old birds come, and are shot as they approach.
The fledglings could, of course, be easily destroyed; the object is to
get at the wary old jays, and prevent their returning next year. Now and
then a buzzard is shot, and if it be only wounded the gunner conceals
himself and pinches it till it calls, when the bird's partner presently
appears, and is also killed. Stoats are plentiful. They have their young
in burrows, or in holes and crevices among the stones, which are found in
quantities in the woods. As any one passes such a heap of stones the
young stoats peep from the crevices and cry "yac, yac," like barking, and
so betray their presence. Three or four traps are set in a circle round
the spot, baited with pieces of rabbit, in which the old stoats are soon
caught. The young stoats in a day or two, not being fed, come out of the
stones, and are shot, or knocked on the head. The woods are always on the
sheltered slopes of the hills, the moors on the summits are bare of
trees; yet it would seem that trees once grew there, trunks of oak being
occasionally dug up from the peat. Both the peaty turf and the heather
are used for fuel; the heather is pulled up, the turf cut with a
particular kind of spade, heart-shaped and pointed, not unlike the
traditional spade used by the gravedigger in "Hamlet," but with a very
long curved handle.

Vipers are sometimes encountered among the heather where it is sandy. A
viper will sometimes wind itself round the stem of a thorn bush, and
thus, turning its head in every direction, defy a dog. Whichever side the
dog approaches, the viper turns its venomous head. Dogs frequently kill
them, and are sometimes bitten, generally in the face, when the dog's
head swells in a few minutes to twice its natural size. Salad oil is the
remedy relied on, and seldom known to fail. The effect of anger on the
common snake is marked. The skin, if the creature is annoyed, becomes
bristly and colder; sometimes there is a strong snake-like smell emitted.
It is singular that the goat-sucker, or fern owl, often stuffed when shot
and preserved in glass cases, does not keep; the bird looks draggled and
falling to pieces. So many of them are like this. Some of the labouring
people who work by the numerous streamlets say that the wagtail dives,
goes right under water like a diver now and then--a circumstance I have
not noticed myself. There is a custom of serving up water-cress with
roast fowl; it is also sometimes boiled like a garden vegetable.
Sometimes a man will take cider with his tea--a cup of tea one side and a
mug of cider on the other. The German bands, who wander even into these
extreme parts of the country, always ask for cider, which they say
reminds them of their own wines at home--like hock, or Rhenish. Though
the junction of Earle and Exe is a long way from the sea (as the Exe
winds), salmon come far up above that to the moors. Salmon-fishing is
preserved, but poachers take them at night with gaffs. There are
water-bailiffs, who keep a good look-out, or think they do, but
occasionally find heads of salmon nailed to their doors in derision. The
missel-thrush is called the "holm-screech." The missel-thrushes, I know,
have a difficulty to defend their young against crows; but last spring I
found a jackdaw endeavouring to get at a missel-thrush's nest. The old
birds were screeching loudly, and trying to drive the jackdaw away. The
chaffinch appears to be called "woodfinch," at least the chaffinch
answered nearest to the bird described to me as a "woodfinch." In another
county it is called the piefinch.

One summer evening I was under a wood by the Exe. The sun had set, and
from over the wooded hill above bars of golden and rosy cloud stretched
out across the sky. The rooks came slowly home to roost, disappearing
over the wood, and at the same time the herons approached in exactly the
opposite direction, flying from Devon into Somerset, and starting out to
feed as the rooks returned home. The first heron sailed on steadily at a
great height, uttering a loud "caak, caak" at intervals. In a few minutes
a second followed, and "caak, caak" sounded again over the river valley.
The third was flying at a less height, and as he came into sight over the
line of the wood he suddenly wheeled round, and, holding his immense
wings extended, dived as a rook will downwards through the air. He
twisted from side to side like a coin partly spun round by the finger and
thumb, as he came down, rushing through the air head first. The sound of
his great vanes pressing and dividing the air was plainly audible. He
looked unable to manage his descent; but at the right moment he recovered
his balance, and rose a little up into a tree on the summit, drawing his
long legs into the branches behind him. The fourth heron fetched a wide
circle, and so descended into the wood; two more passed on over the
valley--altogether six herons in about a quarter of an hour. They
intended, no doubt, to wait in the trees till it was dusky, and then to
go down and fish in the river. Herons are called cranes, and heronies are
craneries. A determined sportsman, who used to eat every heron he could
shoot in revenge for their ravages among the trout, at last became
suspicious, and examining one, found in it the remains of a rat and of a
toad, after which he did not eat any more. Another sportsman found a
heron in the very act of gulping down a good-sized trout, which stuck in
the gullet. He shot the heron and got the trout, which was not at all
injured, only marked on each side where the beak had cut it. The fish was
cooked and eaten.

This summer evening the bars of golden and rosy cloud gradually lost
their bright colour, but retained some purple in the vapour for a long
time. If the red sunset clouds turn black, the country people say it will
rain; if any other colour, it will be fine. The path from the river led
beside the now dusky moor, and the curlew's weird whistle came out of the
increasing darkness. Wild as the curlew is in early summer (when there
are young birds), he will fly up within a short distance of the wayfarer,
whistling, and alight on the burnt, barren surface of the moor. There he
stalks to and fro, grey and upright. He looks a large bird so close. His
head nods at each step, and every now and then his long bill, curved like
a sabre, takes something from the ground. But he is not feeding, he is
watching you. He utters his strange, crying whistle from time to time,
which draws your attention from the young birds.

By these rivers of the west otters are still numerous, and are regularly
hunted. Besides haunting the rivers, they ascend the brooks, and even the
smallest streamlets, and are often killed a long way from the larger
waters.

There are three things to be chiefly noticed in the otter--first, the
great width of the upper nostril; secondly, the length and sharpness of
the hold-fast teeth; and, thirdly, the sturdiness and roundness of the
chest or barrel, expressive of singular strength. The upper nostril is so
broad that when the mouth is open the lower jaw appears but a third of
its width--a mere narrow streak of jaw, dotted, however, with the
sharpest teeth. This distension of the upper jaw and narrowness of the
lower gives the impression of relentless ferocity. His teeth are somewhat
cat-like, and so is his manner of biting. He forces his teeth to meet
through whatever he takes hold of, but then immediately repeats the bite
somewhere else, not holding what he has, but snapping again and again
like a cat, so that his bite is considered even worse than that of the
badger. Now and then, in the excitement of the hunt, a man will put his
hand into the hole occupied by the otter to draw him out. If the huntsman
sees this there is some hard language used, for if the otter chance to
catch the hand, he might so crush and mangle it that it would be useless
for life. Nothing annoys the huntsman more than anything of this kind.

The otter's short legs are deceptive; it does not look as if a creature
so low down could be very serious to encounter or difficult to kill. His
short legs are, in fact, an addition to his strength, which is perhaps
greater than that of any other animal of proportionate size. He weighs
nearly as heavy as a fox, and is even as hard to kill fairly. Unless
speared, or knocked heavily on the head, the otter-hounds can rarely kill
him in the water; when driven to land at last or to a shallow he is often
rather crushed and pressed to death than anything else, and the skin
sometimes has not got a single toothmark in it. Not a single hound has
succeeded in biting through, but there is a different story to tell on
the other side. A terrier has his jaw loose and it has to be bound up,
such a crushing bite has he had. There are torn shoulders, necks, and
limbs, and specks of blood on the nostrils and coats of the other hounds.
A full-grown otter fights like a lion in the water; if he gets in a hole
under the bank where it is hollow, called a "hover," he has to be thrust
out with a pole. He dives under the path of his enemies as they yelp in
the water, and as he goes attacks one from beneath, seizes him by the
leg, and drags him down, and almost drowns him before he will let go. The
air he is compelled to emit from his lungs as he travels across to
another retreat shows his course on the surface, and by the bubbles he is
tracked as he goes deep below.

He tries up the stream, and finds at the place where a ledge of rocks
crosses it eight or ten men armed with long staves standing waiting for
him. If there was but one deep place at the side of the ledge of rocks he
could beat them still and slip by, but the water is low for want of rain,
and he is unable to do so. He turns and tries at the sides of the river
lower down. Behind matted roots, and under the bank, with a rocky
fragment at one side, he faces his pursuers. The hounds are snapped at as
they approach in front. He cannot be struck with a staff from above
because the bank covers him. Some one must wade across and strike him
with a pole till he moves, or carry a terrier or two and pitch them in
the hole, half above and half under water. Next he tries the other bank,
then baffles all by doubling, till some one spies his nostril as he comes
up to breathe. The rocky hill at hand resounds with the cries of the
hounds, the sharp bark of the terriers, the orders of the huntsman, and
the shouts of the others. There are ladies in the mead by the river's
edge watching the hunt. Met in every direction, the otter swims down
stream; there are no rocks there, he knows, but as he comes he finds a
net stretched across. He cannot go down the river for the net, nor up it
for the guarded ledge of rocks; he is enclosed in a pool without a chance
of escape from it, and all he can do is to prolong the unequal contest to
the last moment. Now he visits his former holes or "hovers," to be again
found out; now he rests behind rocky fragments, now dives and doubles or
eludes all for a minute by some turn. So long as his wind endures or he
is not wounded he can stop in the water, and so long as he is in the
water he can live. But by degrees he is encircled; some wade in and cut
off his course; hounds stop him one way and men the other, till, finally
forced to land or to the shallow, he is slain. His webbed feet are cut
off and given as trophies to the ladies who are present. The skin varies
in colour--sometimes a deep brown, sometimes fawn.

The otter is far wilder than the fox; for the fox a home is found and
covers are kept for him, even though he makes free with the pheasants;
but the otter has no home except the river and the rocky fastnesses
beside it. No creature could be more absolutely wild, depending solely
upon his own exertions for existence. Of olden time he was believed to be
able to scent the fish in the water at a considerable distance, as a
hound scents a fox, and to go straight to them. If he gets among a number
he will kill many more than he needs. For this reason he has been driven
by degrees from most of the rivers in the south where he used to be
found, but still exists in Somerset and Devon. Not even in otter-hunting
does he get the same fair play as the fox. No one strikes a fox or puts a
net across his course. That, however, is necessary, but it is time that a
strong protest was made against the extermination of the otter in rivers
like the Thames, where he is treated as a venomous cobra might be on
land; The truth is the otter is a most interesting animal and worth
preservation, even at the cost of what he eats. There is a great
difference between keeping the number of otters down by otter-hunting
within reasonable limits and utterly exterminating them. Hunting the
otter in Somerset is one thing, exterminating them in the Thames another,
and I cannot but feel a sense of deep regret when I hear of fresh efforts
towards this end. In the home counties, and, indeed, in many other
counties, the list of wild creatures is already short enough, and is
gradually decreasing, and the loss of the otter would be serious. This
animal is one of the few perfectly wild creatures that have survived
without any protection from the ancient forest days. Despite
civilisation, it still ventures, occasionally, within a few miles of
London, and well inside that circle in which London takes its pleasure.
It would be imagined that its occurrence so near the metropolis would be
recorded with pride; instead of which, no sooner is the existence of an
otter suspected than gun and trap are eagerly employed for its
destruction.

I cannot but think that the people of London at large, if aware of these
facts, would disapprove of the attempt to exterminate one of the most
remarkable members of their fauna. They should look upon the inhabitants
of the river as peculiarly their own. Some day, perhaps, they will take
possession of the fauna and flora within a certain compass of their city.
Every creature that could be kept alive within such a circle would be a
gain, especially to the Thames, that well-head of the greatest city in
the world. I marvel that they permit the least of birds to be shot upon
its banks. Nothing at present is safe, not so much as a reed-sparrow, not
even the martins that hover over the stormy reaches. Where is the
kingfisher? Where are the water-fowl? Where soon will be the
water-lilies? But if London extended its strong arm, how soon would every
bush be full of bird-life, and the osier-beds and eyots the haunt of wild
creatures! At this moment, it appears, so bitter is the enmity to the
otter, that a reward is set on his head, and as much as two guineas is
sometimes paid for the destruction of a full-grown one. Perhaps the
following list of slaughter may call attention to the matter:--Three
killed by Harlingham Weir in three years. On the 22nd of January, at East
Molesey, opposite the Gallery at Hampton Court, in a field, a fine otter
was shot, weighing twenty-six pounds, and measuring fifty-two inches. On
the 26th of January 1884, a small otter was killed at Thames Ditton. Both
these were close to London from a sporting or natural history point of
view. In February or March 1884, an otter was killed at Cliefden Springs,
Maidenhead; it measured fifty-one inches. Here, then, are six in a short
period, and it is not a complete list; I have a distinct memory of one
caught in a trap by Molesey Weir within the last two or three years, and
then beaten to death with a spade.




THE WATER-COLLEY

The sweet grass was wet with dew as I walked through a meadow in Somerset
to the river. The cuckoo sang, the pleasanter perhaps because his brief
time was nearly over, and all pleasant things seem to have a deeper note
as they draw towards an end. Dew and sweet green grass were the more
beautiful because of the knowledge that the high hills around were
covered by sun-dried, wiry heather. River-side mead, dew-laden grass, and
sparkling stream were like an oasis in the dry desert. They refreshed the
heart to look upon as water refreshes the weary. The shadows were more
marked and defined than they are as day advances, the hues of the flowers
brighter, for the dew was to shadow and flower as if the colours of the
artist were not yet dry. Humblebees went down with caution into the long
grass, not liking to wet their wings. Butterflies and the brilliant moths
of a hot summer's morn alight on a dry heated footpath till the dew is
gone. A great rock rising from the grass by the river's edge alone looked
arid, and its surface already heated, yet it also cast a cool shadow. By
a copse, two rabbits--the latest up of all those which had sported during
the night--stayed till I came near, and then quietly moved in among the
ferns and foxgloves.

In the narrowest part of the wood between the hedge and the river a
corncrake called his loudest "crake, crake," incessantly. The comncrake
or landrail is difficult even to see, so closely does he conceal himself
in the tall grasses, and his call echoed and re-echoed deceives those who
try to find him. Yet by great patience and watchful skilfulness the
corncrake is sometimes caught by hand. If tracked, and if you can see
him--the most difficult part--you can put your hand on him. Now and then
a corncrake is caught in the same way by hand while sitting on her nest
on the ground. It is not, however, as easy as it reads. Walking through
the grass, and thinking of the dew and the beautiful morning sunshine, I
scarcely noticed the quantity of cuckoo-flowers, or cardamine, till
presently it occurred to me that it was very late in the season for
cuckoo-flowers and stooping I picked one, and in the act saw it was an
orchis--the early purple. The meadow was coloured, or rather tinted, with
the abundance of the orchis, palest of pale pink, dotted with red, the
small narrow leaves sometimes with black spots. They grew in the pasture
everywhere, from the river's side in the deep valley to the top of the
hill by the wood.

As soon as the surface of the river was in sight I stood and watched, but
no ripple or ring of wavelets appeared; the trout were not feeding. The
water was so low that the river consisted of a series of pools, connected
by rapids descending over ledges of stones and rocky fragments. Illumined
to the very bottom, every trout was visible, even those under the roots
of trees and the hollow of the bank. A cast with the fly there was
useless; the line would be seen; there was no ripple to hide it. As the
trout, too, were in the pools, it might be concluded that those worth
taking had fed, and only the lesser fish would be found in the eddies,
where they are permitted by the larger fish to feed after they have
finished. Experience and reason were all against the attempt, yet so
delightful is the mere motion and delicate touch of the fly-line on the
water that I could not but let myself enjoy that at least. The slender
lancewood rod swayed, the line swished through the air, and the fly
dropped a few inches too high up the rapid among the stones--I had meant
it to fall farther across in the dark backwater at the foot of the fall.
The swift rush of the current carried the fly instantly downwards, but
not so quick as to escape a troutlet; he took it, and was landed
immediately. But to destroy these under-sized fish was not sport, and as
at that moment a water-colley passed I determined to let the trout alone,
and observe his ways.

Colley means a blackbird; water-colley, the water-blackbird or
water-ousel--called the dipper in the North. In districts where the bird
is seldom seen it is occasionally shot and preserved as a white
blackbird. But in flight and general appearance the water-colley is
almost exactly like a starling with a white neck. His colour is not black
or brown--it is a rusty, undecided brown, at a distance something the
colour of a young starling, and he flies in a straight line, and yet
clumsily, as a young starling does. His very cry, too, sounds immature,
pettish, and unfinished, as if from a throat not capable of a full note.
There are usually two together, and they pass and re-pass all day as you
fish, but if followed are not to be observed without care. I came on the
colley too suddenly the first time, at a bend of the river; he was
beneath the bank towards me, and flew out from under my feet, so that I
did not see him till he was on the wing. Away he flew with a call like a
young bird just tumbled out of its nest, following the curves of the
stream. Presently I saw him through an alder bush which hid me; he was
perched on a root of alder under the opposite bank. Worn away by the
stream the dissolved earth had left the roots exposed, the colley was on
one of them; in a moment he stepped on to the shore under the hollow, and
was hidden behind the roots under a moss-grown stole. When he came out he
saw me, and stopped feeding.

He bobbed himself up and down as he perched on the root in the oddest
manner, bending his legs so that his body almost touched his perch, and
rising again quickly, this repeated in quick succession as if curtsying.
This motion with him is a sign of uncertainty--it shows suspicion; after
he had bobbed to me ten times, off he went. I found him next on a stone
in the middle of the river; it stood up above the surface of a rapid
connecting two pools. Like the trout, the colley always feeds at the
rapids, and flies as they swim, from fall to fall. He was bobbing up and
down, his legs bent, and his rusty brown body went up and down, but as I
was hidden by a hedge he pained confidence, suspended his curtsying, and
began to feed. First he looked all round the stone, and then stepped to
another similar island in the midst of the rushing water, pushing his
head over the edge into it. Next he stepped into the current, which,
though shallow, looked strong enough to sweep him away. The water checked
against him rose to the white mark on his breast. He waded up the rapid,
every now and then thrusting his head completely under the water;
sometimes he was up to his neck, sometimes not so deep; now and then
getting on a stone, searching right and left as he climbed the cascade.
The eddying water shot by his slender legs, but he moved against it
easily, and soon ascended the waterfall. At the summit a second colley
flew past, and he rose and accompanied his friend.

Upon a ledge of rock I saw him once more, but there was no hedge to hide
me, and he would not feed; he stood and curtsied, and at the moment of
bobbing let his wings too partly down, his tail drooping at the same
time. Calling in an injured tone, as if much annoyed, he flew, swept
round the meadow, and so to the river behind me. His friend followed. On
reaching the river at a safe distance down, he skimmed along the surface
like a kingfisher. They find abundance of insect life among the stones at
the falls, and everywhere in shallow water. Some accuse them of taking
the ova of trout, and they are shot at trout nurseries; but it is
doubtful if they are really guilty, nor can they do any appreciable
injury in an open stream, not being in sufficient numbers. It is the
birds and other creatures peculiar to the water that render fly-fishing
so pleasant; were they all destroyed, and nothing left but the mere fish,
one might as well stand and fish in a stone cattle-trough. I hope all
true lovers of sport will assist in preserving rather than in killing
them.




NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING

I

The earth has a way of absorbing things that are placed upon it, of
drawing from them their stiff individuality of newness, and throwing over
them something of her own antiquity. As the furrow smooths and brightens
the share, as the mist eats away the sharpness of the iron angles, so, in
a larger manner, the machines sent forth to conquer the soil are
conquered by it, become a part of it, and as natural as the old, old
scythe and reaping-hook. Thus already the new agriculture has grown hoar.

The oldest of the modern implements is the threshing-machine, which is
historic, for it was once the cause of rural war. There are yeomanry men
still living who remember how they rode about at night after the rioters,
guided by the blazing bonfires kindled to burn the new-fangled things.
Much blood--of John Barleycorn--was spilt in that campaign; and there is
many a farmer yet hearty who recollects the ale-barrels being rolled up
into the rickyards and there broached in cans and buckets, that the
rebels, propitiated with plentiful liquor, might forbear to set fire to
the ricks or sack the homestead. Such memories read strange to the
present generation, proving thereby that the threshing-machine has
already grown old. It is so accepted that the fields would seem to lack
something if it were absent. It is as natural as the ricks: things grow
old so soon in the fields.

On the fitful autumn breeze, with brown leaves whirling and grey grass
rustling in the hedges, the hum of the fly-wheel sounds afar, travelling
through the mist which hides the hills. Sometimes the ricks are in the
open stubble, up the Down side, where the wind comes in a long, strong
rush, like a tide, carrying away the smoke from the funnel in a sweeping
trail; while the brown canvas, stretched as a screen, flaps and tears,
and the folk at work can scarce hear each other speak, any more than you
can by the side of the sea. Vast atmospheric curtains--what else can you
call them?--roll away, opening a view of the stage of hills a moment,
and, closing again, reach from heaven to earth around. The dark sky
thickens and lowers as if it were gathering thunder, as women glean
wheatears in their laps. It is not thunder; it is as if the wind grew
solid and hurled itself--as a man might throw out his clenched fist--at
the hill. The inclined plane of the mist-clouds again reflects a grey
light, and, as if swept up by the fierce gale, a beam of sunshine comes.
You see it first long, as it is at an angle; then overhead it shortens,
and again lengthens after it has passed, somewhat like the spoke of a
wheel. In the second of its presence a red handkerchief a woman wears on
the ricks stands out, the brass on the engine glows, the water in the
butt gleams, men's faces brighten, the cart-horse's coat looks glossy,
the straw a pleasant yellow. It is gone, and lights up the backs of the
sheep yonder as it runs up the hill swifter than a hare. Swish! The north
wind darkens the sky, and the fly-wheel moans in the gloom; the
wood-pigeons go a mile a minute on the wind, hardly using their wings;
the brown woods below huddle together, rounding their shoulders to the
blast; a great air-shadow, not mist, a shadow of thickness in the air
looms behind a tiled roof in the valley. The vast profound is full of the
rushing air.

These are days of autumn; but earlier than this, when the wheat that is
now being threshed was ripe, the reaping-machine went round and round the
field, beginning at the outside by the hedges. Red arms, not unlike a
travelling windmill on a small scale, sweep the corn as it is cut and
leave it spread on the ground. The bright red fans, the white jacket of
the man driving, the brown and iron-grey horses, and yellow wheat are
toned--melted together at their edges--with warm sunlight. The machine is
lost in the corn, and nothing is visible but the colours, and the fact
that it is the reaping, the time of harvest, dear to man these how many
thousand years! There is nothing new in it; it is all old as the hills.
The straw covers over the knives, the rims of the wheels sink into
pimpernel, convolvulus, veronica; the dry earth powders them, and so all
beneath is concealed. Above the sunlight (and once now and then the
shadow of a tree) throws its mantle over, and, like the hand of an
enchanter softly waving, surrounds it with a charm. So the cranks, and
wheels, and knives, and mechanism do not exist--it was a machine in the
workshop, but it is not a machine in the wheat-field. For the wheat-field
you see is very, very old, and the air is of old time, and the shadow,
the flowers, and the sunlight, and that which moves among them becomes of
them. The solitary reaper alone in the great field goes round and round,
the red fans striking beside him, alone with the sunlight, and the blue
sky, and the distant hills; and he and his reaper are as much of the
corn-field as the long-forgotten sickle or the reaping-hook.

The sharp rattle of the mowing-machine disturbs the corncrake in the
meadow. Crake! crake! for many a long day since the grass began to grow
fast in April till the cowslips flowered, and white parsley flourished
like a thicket, blue scabious came up, and yonder the apple trees drop
their bloom. Crake! crake! nearly day and night; but now the rattle
begins, and the bird must take refuge in the corn. Like the reaper, the
mowing-machine is buried under the swathe it cuts, and flowers fall over
it--broad ox-eye daisies and red sorrel. Upon the hedge June roses bloom;
blackbirds whistle in the oaks; now and again come the soft hollow notes
of the cuckoo. Angles and wheels, cranks and cogs, where are they? They
are lost; it is not these we see, but the flowers and the pollen on the
grass. There is an odour of new-made hay; there is the song of birds, and
the trees are beautiful.

As for the drill in spring-time, it is ancient indeed, and ancients
follow it--aged men stepping after over the clods, and watching it as if
it were a living thing, that the grains may fall each in its appointed
place. Their faces, their gait, nay, the very planting of their heavy
shoes' stamp on the earth, are full of the importance of this matter. On
this the year depends, and the harvest, and all our lives, that the
sowing be accomplished in good order, as is meet. Therefore they are in
earnest, and do not turn aside to gaze at strangers, like those do who
hoe, being of no account. This is a serious matter, needing men of days,
little of speech, but long of experience. So the heavy drill, with its
hanging rows of funnels, travels across the field well tended, and there
is not one who notes the deep azure of the March sky above the elms.

Still another step, tracing the seasons backwards, brings in the
steam-plough. When the spotted arum leaves unfold on the bank, before the
violets or the first celandine, while the "pussies" hang on the hazel,
the engines roll into the field, pressing the earth into barred ruts. The
massive wheels leave their imprint, the footsteps of steam, behind them.
By the hedges they stand, one on either side, and they hold the field
between them with their rope of iron. Like the claws of some prehistoric
monster, the shares rout up the ground; the solid ground is helpless
before them; they tear and rend it. One engine is under an oak, dark yet
with leafless boughs, up through which the black smoke rises; the other
overtops a low hedge, and is in full profile. By the panting, and the
humming, and the clanking as the drum revolves, by the smoke hanging in
the still air, by the trembling of the monster as it strains and tugs, by
the sense of heat, and effort, and pent-up energy bubbling over in jets
of steam that struggle through crevices somewhere, by the straightened
rope and the jerking of the plough as it comes, you know how mighty is
the power that thus in narrow space works its will upon the earth.
Planted broadside, its four limbs--the massive wheels--hold the ground
like a wrestler drawing to him the unwilling opponent. Humming, panting,
trembling, with stretched but irresistible muscles, the iron creature
conquers, and the plough approaches. All the field for the minute seems
concentrated in this thing of power. There are acres and acres, scores of
acres around, but they are surface only. This is the central spot: they
are nothing, mere matter. This is force--Thor in another form. If you are
near you cannot take your eyes off the sentient iron, the wrestler
straining. But now the plough has come over, and the signal given
reverses its way. The lazy monotonous clanking as the drum unwinds on
this side, the rustling of the rope as it is dragged forth over the
clods, the quiet rotation of the fly-wheel--these sounds let the excited
thought down as the rotating fly-wheel works off the maddened steam. The
combat over, you can look round.

It is the February summer that comes, and lasts a week or so between the
January frosts and the east winds that rush through the thorns. Some
little green is even now visible along the mound where seed-leaves are
springing up. The sun is warm, and the still air genial, the sky only
dotted with a few white clouds. Wood-pigeons are busy in the elms, where
the ivy is thick with ripe berries. There is a feeling of spring and of
growth; in a day or two we shall find violets; and listen, how sweetly
the larks are singing! Some chase each other, and then hover fluttering
above the hedge. The stubble, whitened by exposure to the weather, looks
lighter in the sunshine, and the distant view is softened by haze. A
water-tank approaches, and the cart-horse steps in the pride of strength.
The carter's lad goes to look at the engine and to wonder at the uses of
the gauge. All the brazen parts gleam in the bright sun, and the driver
presses some waste against the piston now it works slowly, till it shines
like polished silver. The red glow within, as the furnace-door is opened,
lights up the lad's studious face beneath like sunset. A few brown leaves
yet cling to one bough of the oak, and the rooks come over cawing happily
in the unwonted warmth. The low hum and the monotonous clanking, the
rustling of the wire rope, give a sense of quiet. Let us wander along the
hedge, and look for signs of spring. This is to-day. To-morrow, if we
come, the engines are half hidden from afar by driving sleet and
scattered snow-flakes fleeting aslant the field. Still sternly they
labour in the cold and gloom. A third time you may find them, in
September or bright October, with acorns dropping from the oaks, the
distant sound of the gun, and perhaps a pheasant looking out from the
corner. If the moon be full and bright they work on an hour or so by her
light, and the vast shadows of the engines are thrown upon the stubble.



II

Among the meadows the buttercups in spring are as innumerable as ever and
as pleasant to look upon. The petal of the buttercup has an enamel of
gold; with the nail you may scrape it off, leaving still a yellow ground,
but not reflecting the sunlight like the outer layer. From the centre the
golden pollen covers the fingers with dust like that from the wing of a
butterfly. In the bunches of grass and by the gateways the germander
speedwell looks like tiny specks of blue stolen, like Prometheus' fire,
from the summer sky. When the mowing-grass is ripe the heads of sorrel
are so thick and close that at a little distance the surface seems as if
sunset were always shining red upon it. From the spotted orchis leaves in
April to the honeysuckle-clover in June, and the rose and the honeysuckle
itself, the meadow has changed in nothing that delights the eye. The
draining, indeed, has made it more comfortable to walk about on, and some
of the rougher grasses have gone from the furrows, diminishing at the
same time the number of cardamine flowers; but of these there are
hundreds by the side of every tiny rivulet of water, and the aquatic
grasses flourish in every ditch. The meadow-farmers, dairymen, have not
grubbed many hedges--only a few, to enlarge the fields, too small before,
by throwing two into one. So that hawthorn and blackthorn, ash and
willow, with their varied hues of green in spring, briar and bramble,
with blackberries and hips later on, are still there as in the old, old
time. Bluebells, violets, cowslips--the same old favourite flowers--may
be found on the mounds or sheltered near by. The meadow-farmers have
dealt mercifully with the hedges, because they know that for shade in
heat and shelter in storm the cattle resort to them. The hedges--yes, the
hedges, the very synonym of Merry England--are yet there, and long may
they remain. Without hedges England would not be England. Hedges, thick
and high, and full of flowers, birds, and living creatures, of shade and
flecks of sunshine dancing up and down the bark of the trees--I love
their very thorns. You do not know how much there is in the hedges.

We have still the woods, with here and there a forest, the beauty of the
hills, and the charm of winding brooks. I never see roads, or horses,
men, or anything when I get beside a brook. There is the grass, and the
wheat, the clouds, the delicious sky, and the wind, and the sunlight
which falls on the heart like a song. It is the same, the very same, only
I think it is brighter and more lovely now than it was twenty years ago.

Along the footpath we travel slowly; you cannot walk fast very long in a
footpath; no matter how rapidly at first, you soon lessen your pace, and
so country people always walk slowly. The stiles--how stupidly they are
put together. For years and years every one who has passed them, as long
as man can remember, has grumbled at them; yet there they are still, with
the elms reaching high above, and cows gazing over--cows that look so
powerful, but so peacefully yield the way. They are a better shape than
the cattle of the ancient time, less lanky, and with fewer corners; the
lines, to talk in yachtsman's language, are finer. Roan is a colour that
contrasts well with meadows and hedges. The horses are finer, both
cart-horse and nag. Approaching the farmsteads, there are hay-ricks, but
there are fewer corn-ricks. Instead of the rows on rows, like the conical
huts of a savage town, there are but a few, sometimes none. So many are
built in the fields and threshed there "to rights," as the bailiff would
say. It is not needful to have them near home or keep them, now the
threshing-machine has stayed the flail and emptied the barns. Perhaps
these are the only two losses to those who look at things and mete them
with the eye--the corn-ricks and the barns. The corn-ricks were very
characteristic, but even now you may see plenty if you look directly
after harvest. The barns are going by degrees, passing out of the life of
farming; let us hope that some of them will be converted into silos, and
so saved.

At the farmsteads themselves there are considerations for and against. On
the one hand, the house and the garden is much tidier, less uncouth;
there are flowers, such as geraniums, standard roses, those that are
favourites in towns; and the unsightly and unhealthy middens and pools of
muddy water have disappeared from beside the gates. But the old flowers
and herbs are gone, or linger neglected in corners, and somehow the
gentle touch of time has been effaced. The house has got a good deal away
from farming. It is on the farm, but disconnected. It is a residence, not
a farmhouse. Then you must consider that it is more healthy, sweeter, and
better for those who live in it. From a little distance the old effect is
obtainable. One thing only I must protest against, and that is the
replacing of tiles with slates. The old red tiles of the farmhouses are
as natural as leaves; they harmonise with the trees and the hedges, the
grass, the wheat, and the ricks. But slates are wrong. In new houses,
even farmhouses, it does not matter so much; the owners cannot be found
fault with for using the advantages of modern times. On old houses where
tiles were once, to put slates is an offence, nothing less. Every one who
passes exclaims against it. Tiles tone down and become at home; they
nestle together, and look as if you could be happily drowsy and slumber
under them. They are to a house what leaves are to a tree, and leaves
turn reddish or brown in the autumn. Upon the whole, with the exception
of the slates--the hateful slates--the farmsteads are improved, for they
have lost a great deal that was uncouth and even repulsive, which was
slurred over in old pictures or omitted, but which was there.

The new cottages are ugly with all their ornamentation; their false
gables, impossible porches, absurd windows, are distinctly repellent.
They are an improvement in a sanitary sense, and we are all glad of that,
but we cannot like the buildings. They are of no style or time; only one
thing is certain about them--they are _not_ English. Fortunately there
are plenty of old cottages, hundreds of them (they show little or no sign
of disappearing), and these can be chosen instead. The villages are to
outward appearance much as they used to be, but the people are very
different. In manners, conversation, and general tone there is a great
change. It is, indeed, the people who have altered more than the surface
of the country. Hard as the farmer may work, and plough and sow with
engine and drill, the surface of the land does not much vary; but the
farmer himself and the farmer's man are quite another race to what they
were. Perhaps it was from this fact that the impression grew up that
modern agriculture has polished away all the distinctive characteristics
of the country. But it has not done so any more than it has removed the
hills. The truth is, as I have endeavoured to explain, innovations so
soon become old in the fields. The ancient earth covers them with her own
hoar antiquity, and their newness disappears. They have already become so
much a part of the life of the country that it seems as if they had
always been there, so easily do they fit in, so easily does the eye
accept them.

Intrinsically there is nothing used in modern agriculture less
symmetrical than what was previously employed. The flails were the
simplest of instruments, and were always seen with the same
accompaniment--the interior of a barn. The threshing-machine is certainly
not less interesting; it works in the open air, often with fine scenic
surroundings, and the number of people with it impart vivacity. In
reaping with the reaping-hook there were more men in the wheat, but the
reaping-machine is not without colour. Scythes are not at all pleasant
things; the mowing-machine is at least no worse. As for the steam-plough,
it is very interesting to watch. All these fit in with trees and hedges,
fields and woods, as well, and in some cases in a more striking manner
than the old instruments. The surface of the ground presents more varied
colours even than before, and the sunlight produces rich effects. Nor
have all the ancient aspects disappeared as supposed--quite the reverse.
In the next field to the steam-plough the old ploughs drawn by horses may
be seen at work, and barns still stand, and the old houses. In hill
districts oxen are yet yoked to the plough, the scythe and reaping-hook
are often seen at work, and, in short, the old and the new so shade and
blend together that you can hardly say where one begins and the other
ends. That there are many, very many things concerning agriculture and
country life whose disappearance is to be regretted I have often pointed
out, and having done so, I feel that I can with the more strength affirm
that in its natural beauty the country is as lovely now as ever.

It is, I venture to think, a mistake on the part of some who depict
country scenes on canvas that they omit these modern aspects, doubtless
under the impression that to admit them would impair the pastoral scene
intended to be conveyed. So many pictures and so many illustrations seem
to proceed upon the assumption that steam-plough and reaping-machine do
not exist, that the landscape contains nothing but what it did a hundred
years ago. These sketches are often beautiful, but they lack the force of
truth and reality. Every one who has been fifty miles into the country,
if only by rail, knows while looking at them that they are not real. You
feel that there is something wanting, you do not know what. That
something is the hard, perhaps angular fact which at once makes the sky
above it appear likewise a fact. Why omit fifty years from the picture?
That is what it usually means--fifty years left out; and somehow we feel
as we gaze that these fields and these skies are not of our day. The
actual fields, the actual machines, the actual men and women (how
differently dressed to the conventional pictorial costumes!) would
prepare the mind to see and appreciate the colouring, the design, the
beauty--what, for lack of a better expression, may be called the soul of
the picture--far more than forgotten, and nowadays even impossible
accessories. For our sympathy is not with them, but with the things of
our own time.




VILLAGE MINERS



"Right so, the hunter takes his pony which has been trained for the
purpose, and stalks the deer behind him; the pony feeds towards the herd,
so that they do not mind his approach, and when within a hundred yards,
the hunter kneels down in the grass and fixes his iron rest or fork in
the ground. He rests his Winchester rifle in the fork, and aims under the
pony (which stands quite still) at his game. He generally kills one dead
at the first shot, and wounds two or three more, firing rapidly after the
first discharge so as to get as many shots as possible before the herd is
out of range." So writes a friend in the wilds of Texas, adding that the
hides fetch a few dollars. "Right so, departed Sir Launcelot."... "Right
so, Sir Launcelot, his father, dressed his spear."... "Right so, he heard
a voice that said;"--so runs the phrase in the "Mort d'Arthur," that
ancient history of the Round Table, which was published nearly four
hundred years ago. The coincidence of phrase indicates some resemblance
in the circumstances, though so wide apart in time and distance. In
England, in those old days, men lived in the woods and forests--out-of-
doors--and were occupied with manual works. They had no opportunities of
polishing their discourse, or their literary compositions. At this hour,
in remote parts of the great continent of America, the pioneers of modern
civilisation may be said to live amid medieval surroundings. The vast
forests and endless prairies give a romance to common things. Sometimes
pathos and sometimes humour arises in the log-cabin, and when the history
of these simple but deeply human incidents comes to be told in this
country, we are moved by the strange piquancy of event and language. From
the new sounds and scenes, these Anglo-Saxons hewing a way through pine
and hemlock now, as their ancestors hewed a way into England, have added
fresh words and phrases to our common tongue. These words are not slang,
they are pure primeval language. They express the act, or the scene, or
the circumstance, as exactly as if it was painted in sound. For instance,
the word "crack" expresses the noise of a rifle; say "crack," and you
have the very sound; say "detonation," and it gives no ear-picture at
all. Such a word is "ker-chunk." Imagine a huge log of timber falling
from rock to rock, or a wounded opossum out of a tree, the word expresses
the sound. There are scores of such examples, and it is these pure
primitive words which put so much force into the narratives of American
pathos and humour.

Now, the dwellers in our own villages and country places in their way
make use of just such expressions, that is, of words which afford the ear
a picture of the act or circumstance, hieroglyphs of sound, and often,
both in language and character, exhibit a close parallelism with the
Californian miners. Country people say "fall" for autumn; "fall" is the
usual American term for that season, and fall is most appropriate for the
downward curve of time, the descent of the leaf. A slender slip of
womanhood in the undeveloped period is alluded to in the villages as a
"slickit" of a girl. "Slickit" means thin, slender, a piece that might be
whittled off a stick with a knife, not a shaving, for a shaving curls,
but a "slickit," a long thin slice. If any one be carving awkwardly with
the left wrist doubled under, the right arm angularly extended, and the
knife sawing at a joint, our village miners and country Californians call
it "cack-" or "cag-handed." Cag-handed is worse than back-handed; it
means awkward, twisted, and clumsy. You may see many a cag-handed person
hacking at a fowl.

Hamlet folk are very apt to look a gift horse in the mouth, and if any
one should receive a present not so large as expected, it would be
contemptuously described as a "footy" little thing. "Footy" pronounced
with a sneering expression of countenance conveys a sense of
despicableness, even to those who do not know its exact definition, which
may be taken as mean. Suppose a bunch of ripe nuts high up and almost out
of reach; by dint of pressing into the bushes, pulling at the bough, and
straining on tiptoe, you may succeed in "scraambing" it down.
"Scraambing," or "scraambed," with a long accent on the aa, indicates the
action of stetching and pulling downwards. Though somewhat similar in
sound, it has no affinity with scramble; people scramble for things which
have been thrown on the ground. In getting through hedges the thorns are
apt to "limm" one's clothes, tearing a jagged hole in the coat. Country
children are always "limming" their clothes to pieces; "limm," or "limb,"
expresses a ragged tear.

Recently, fashion set the example of ladies having their hair shorn as
short as men. It is quite common to see young ladies, the backs of whose
heads are polled, all the glory of hair gone, no plait, no twist, but all
cut close and somewhat rough. If a village Californian were to see this
he would say, "they got their hair hogged off." "Hogged" means cut off
short so as to stand up like bristles. Ponies often have hogs' manes; all
the horses in the Grecian sculpture have their manes hogged. In bitter
winter weather the servants in the dairies who have much to do with
buckets of water, and spend the morning in splashing--for dairies need
much of that kind of thing--sometimes find that the drops have frozen as
they walk, and discover that their aprons are fringed with "daglets,"
_i.e._ icicles. Thatched roofs are always hung with "daglets" in frost;
thatch holds a certain amount of moisture, as of mist, and this drips
during the day and so forms stalactites of ice, often a foot or more in
length. "Clout" is a "dictionary word," a knock on the head, but it is
pronounced differently here; they say a "clue" in the head. Stuttering
and stammering each express well-known conditions of speech, but there is
another not recognised in dictionary language. If a person has been made
a butt of, laughed at, joked, and tormented till he hesitates and fumbles
as it were with his words, he is said to be in a state of "hacka."
"Hacka" is to have to think a minute before he can say what he wants to.

"Simmily" is a word of little interest, being evidently a mere
provincialism and distortion of "seemingly," as "summat" of "something,"
or "somewhat," indifferently.

Occasionally a person is seized with a giggling fit, laughs on the least,
or without any, provocation--a rather idiotic state--which he is quite
conscious of but cannot stop. Presently some one will ask, "Have you
found a wicker's nest?" which is a biting sarcasm, though the precise
meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest.
Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling is wickering. The first work a boy
does is to go out with a clapper, or his own strong voice, to scare birds
from the corn all day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads
themselves, with an appreciation of the other side of the case, call it
bird-starving. Forage is often used in a general sense of food, or in the
more particular sense of green food, as clover, or vetches. Fodder, on
the other hand, indicates dry food, such as hay; the labourers go twice a
day in winter to fodder the cattle, that is, to carry them their hay.
Many of these labourers before they start out to work, in their own
words, "fodder" their boots. Some fine soft hay is pushed into the boots,
forming a species of sock. Should either of them have a clumsy pair, they
say his boots are like a seed-lip, which is a vessel like a basket used
in sowing corn, and would be a very loose fit. They have not yet
forgotten the ancient superstition about Easter Sunday, and the girls
will not go out without a new ribbon at least; they must have something
new on that day, if the merest trifle.

The backwoodsmen have found out many ways of curing cuts, wounds, bruises
and injuries, rough methods, but effectual, and use the herbs and leaves
much as their English forefathers did a century ago. For the most part in
villages the knowledge and use of herbs has died out, and there are not
many who resort to them. Elder-flower ointment, however, keeps its
ground, and is, I think, still made for sale in the shops of towns. But
the true country elder-flower ointment contains a little piece of
adder's-tongue fern, which is believed to confer magical virtue. So
curious a plant may naturally have had a mysterious value attached to it
in old times. It is the presence of this touch of home-lore in the recipe
which makes the product so different from the "ointment of the
apothecary," manufactured by scale and weight and prosaic rule. Upon some
roofs the houseleek still grows, though it is now often torn away as
injurious. Where it grows it is usually on outhouses attached to the main
building, sloping lean-tos. It does not present so glowing an appearance
as the stonecrop, which now and then flourishes on houses, and looks like
a brilliant golden cushion against the red tiles. The houseleek, however,
is a singular plant, worthy of examination; it has an old-world look, as
if it had survived beyond its date into the nineteenth century. It hides
in odd places and gables like a relic of witchcraft, and a black cat and
an aged woman with a crutch-handled stick would be its appropriate owner.
The houseleek is still used for the cure of wounds and cuts. A leaf--the
leaves are rather like portions of the plant than mere leaves--is bruised
to pulp, and the juice and some of the pulp mixed with cream. They say it
is efficacious. They call it "silgreen." In old English singreen means
evergreen. Silgreen and singreen seem close congeners. Possibly sil or
sin may be translated "through" as much as "ever," for the leaf of the
plant is thick, and green all through, if broken like a tough cake. I
think I would rather use it than the tobacco juice which the mowers and
reapers are now so fond of applying to the cuts they frequently get. They
appear to have quite forsaken the ancient herbal remedies, as the
sickle-herb, knotted figwort, and so on. Tobacco juice does not seem a
nice thing for a bleeding wound; probably it gets well rather in spite of
it than because of it.

If any one wanted a tonic in old farmhouses, it used to be the custom,
and till quite lately, to put a nail in sherry, making an iron wine,
which was believed to be very restorative. Now, one of the recent
additions to the wine merchants' lists is a sherry from Australia,
Tintara, which is recommended on account of its having been extracted
from grapes growing on an ironstone soil. So the old things come up again
in another form. There are scores of iron tonics of various kinds sold in
the shops; possibly the nail in sherry was almost as good. Those who did
not care to purchase sherry, put their nail in cider. A few odd names of
plants may yet be heard among the labourers, such as "loving-andrews" for
the blue meadow geranium; "loggerums" for the hard knapweed, and also for
the scabious; "Saturday night's pepper" for the spurge, which grows wild
in gardens; and there is a weed called "good-neighbour," but as to which
it is I am ignorant. The spotted-leaf orchis flowers, which grow in moist
and shady meads, lifting their purplish heads among the early spring
grass, are called by the children "gran'fer goslings." To express extreme
lack--as of money--they will say their purses are as bare as a toad is of
feathers.

In these days it is the fashion to praise mattresses and to depreciate
the feather-bed. Nothing so healthy as a mattress, nothing so good in
every way. Mattresses are certainly cheaper, and there it ends. I
maintain that no modern invention approaches the feather-bed. People try
to persuade me to eat the coarsest part of flour--actually the rejected
part--and to sleep on a mattress; that is to say, to go back about twenty
thousand years in civilisation. But I decline. Having some acquaintance
with wheat, I prefer the fine white flour, which is the very finest of
all the products of the earth; having slept on all sorts of beds, sitting
on a pole, lying on turf leaning against a tree, and so forth, no one
will ever persuade me that any couch is equal to a feather-bed. But
should any desire a yet cheaper mattress than those advertised, I can put
them in the way to obtain it. Among my hamlet Californians it is not
unusual to find beds in use stuffed with the "hucks" of oats, _i.e._ the
chaff. Like the backwoodsmen, they have to make shift with what they can
get. Their ancestors steamed their arrows so as to soften the wood, when
it was bound to a rigid rod and hung up in the chimney to dry perfectly
straight. The modern cottager takes a stout stick and boils it in the pot
till it becomes flexible. He then bends it into the shape of a hook, ties
it with string in that curve, and suspends it in his chimney corner to
dry crooked. This crooked stick is the fagging. hook used to pull the
wheat towards the reaper with the left hand, while he cuts it with the
reap-hook in the right.

Suppose some one wavers and cannot make up his mind. Now he will do this
and now he will do that, uncertain and unstable, putting his hand to the
plough and removing it again, my Californian at home would call him
"wivel-minded." "Wivelly" means undecided, wavering, not to be depended
on. It sounds like it. If the labourer gets his clothes soaked, he says
they are "sobbled." The sound of boots or dress saturated with rain very
nearly approximates to sobbled. But "gaamze" is the queerest word,
perhaps, of all--it is to smear as with grease. Beans are said to be
"cherky," which means dry. Doubtless the obese old gentleman in Boccaccio
who was cured of his pains--the result of luxurious living--by a diet
which forced him to devour beans for very hunger, did think them dry and
cherky. They have come up again now in the shape of lentils, which are
nothing but beans. It is not generally known that Boccaccio was the
inventor of the bean cure. Cat's claws are notoriously apt to scratch.
Should a savage cat tear out a piece of flesh from the hand, she is said
to "dawk" it out. "Dawk" expresses a ferocious dab and tear combined. A
sharp iron nail unseen might "dawk" the skin off an unwary hand. In
ancient days when women quarrelled and fought, they are said to have
"dawked" fragments from each other's faces with their finger-nails. Such
incidents are now obsolete. It has often been pointed out that many names
of places are reduplications. New layers of population, Saxon, Dane, or
Norman, added their words with the same meaning to the former term. There
is a hill called "Up-at-a-Peak." "Up" itself signifies high, as in the
endless examples in which it forms the first syllable. "Peak," of course,
is point. This is a modern reduplication, not an archaeological one.

If any one hacks and haws in speaking, it is called "hum-dawing." Some
very prominent persons of the present day are much given to "hum-dawing,"
which is often a species of conversational hedging. Are "horse-stepple"
and "stabbling" purely provincial, or known in towns? "Stepple" is the
mark or step of a horse; "stabbling" is poaching up the turf or ground
from continual movement of feet, whether human, equine, or otherwise. The
ground near gateways in fields is often "stabbled" to such a degree in
wet weather as to appear impassable. A piece of wood falling into water,
gradually absorbs the liquid into its pores, and swells. The same thing
happens in wet weather to gates and even doors; the wood swells, so that
if they fitted at all tightly before, they can then scarcely be opened.
Anything that swells in this manner by absorption is said to "plim." A
sponge does not "plim"; it is not apparently larger when full of water
than previously, and it is still limp. To "plim "up implies a certain
amount of enlargement, and consequent tightness or firmness. Snow-flakes
are called "blossoms." The word snow-flake is unknown. A big baby is
always a thing to be proud of, and you may hear an enthusiastic aunt
describing the weight and lumpiness of the youngster, and winding up with
the declaration, "He's a regular nitch." A chump of wood, short, thick,
and heavy, is said to be a "nitch," but it seems gone out of use a good
deal for general weights, and to be chiefly used in speaking of infants.
There is a word of somewhat similar sound common among the fishermen of
the south coast. Towards the stern of a fishing smack there is a stout
upright post with a fork at the top, into which fork the mast is lowered
while they are engaged with the nets at sea. It is called the "mitch," or
"match," but though I mention it as similar in sound, I do not think it
has any other affinity.

Of old time, crab-apples were usually planted in or near rickyards or
elsewhere close to farmhouses. The custom is now gone out; no crab-apples
are planted, and so in course of years there will be but few. Crab-apple
is not nearly so plentiful as anciently, either in hedges or enclosures.
The juice of the crab-apple, varges, used to be valued as a cure for
sprains. The present generation can hardly understand that there was a
time when matches were not known. To such a period must be traced the
expression still common in out-of-the-way places, of a "handful of fire."
A cottager who found her fire out would go to a neighbour and bring home
some live embers to light up again. When the fire chances to be nearly
out, the expression is still heard both in cottages and farmhouses,
"There is hardly a handful of fire." Such a mere handful is of course
easily "douted." An extinguisher "douts" a candle; the heel of a boot
"douts" a match thrown down. But the exact definition of "dout" is to
smother, or extinguish by beating. In the days when wood fires were
universal, as the wood burned, quantities of a fine white powder or ash
collected, which at intervals, when the servant cleaned the hearth, was
swept up into a corner. At night, if any embers remained glowing, a few
shovelfuls of this heap of white ash were thrown over them before
retiring, and so the fire was "douted." To smother with such ashes
precisely conveys the meaning of "dout." Incipient fires in grass, straw,
or other material, are often beaten out as with bushes; this too is
"douting." Stick your heels in the ground, arch your spine, and drag with
all your might at a rope, and then you would be said to "scaut." Horses
going uphill, or straining to draw a heavily laden waggon through a mud
hole, "scaut" and tug. At football there is a good deal of "scauting."
The axle of a wheelbarrow revolving without grease, and causing an
ear-piercing sound, is said to be giving forth a "scrupeting" noise. What
can be more explicit, and at the same time so aggravating, as to be told
that you are a "mix-muddle"? A person who mixes up his commissions may
feel a little abashed. A person who muddles his affairs may not be
altogether proud of his achievements. But to be a mix-muddle, to both mix
and muddle, to morally fumble without tact, and display a totally
imbecile wandering; I shall get mixed myself if I try to describe such a
state. Mixed in this sense is American too. Take a duster, dexterously
swing it, and remove a fleck of dust from a table or books, and you will
understand the verb to "flirk," which is nearly the same as to flick.
"Pansherds" are "potsherds."

Here is a country recipe for discovering whether a lover is faithful or
not. Take a laurel leaf, scratch his name on it, or the initials, and put
it in the bosom of the dress. If it turns brown, he is true; if not,
he'll deceive you. The character of a girl, according to the following
couplets, is to be learned from the colour of her eyes:--

    "Brown eyes, beauty,
     Do your mother's duty.
     Blue eyes--pick-a-pie,
     Lie a-bed and tell a lie.
     Grey eyes--greediness,
     Gobble all the world up."

The interpretation is, that brown eyes indicate a gentle and dutiful
disposition. Blue eyes show three guilty tendencies--to pick-a-pie, that
is, to steal; to lie a-bed, that is, to be idle; and to tell a lie. As
for grey eyes, their selfish greediness and ambition could not be
contented with less than the whole world. No one but a woman could have
composed this scandal on the sex. Sometimes the green lanes are crossed
by gates, over which the trees in the hedges each side form a leafy arch.
On the top bar of such a gate, rustic lovers often write love messages to
their ladies, with a fragment of chalk. Unable from some cause or other
to keep the appointed rendezvous, they leave a few explanatory words in
conspicuous white letters, so that the gate answers the same purpose as
the correspondence column in the daily papers. When a gate is not
available, they thrust a stick in the ground near the footpath, split the
upper end, and place a piece of paper in it with the message.

The hamlet forge is not yet quite extinct, and the blacksmith's hammer
sounds among the oaks. He frequently has to join two pieces of iron
together, say to lengthen a rod. He places both ends in the fire, heats
them to a certain point, and then presses the one against the other. By
this simple means of touching they unite, the metal becomes one almost
like a chemical union, and so complete is it, that, with a little
polishing to remove the marks of fire, the join is not perceptible to an
ordinary eye. This is the most perfect way of joining metal, and when
accomplished, the pieces are said to be "butt-shut." The word has passed
from the forge into conversation, and the expression is often heard,
"That won't butt-shut." If any one be telling a tale, or giving an
account of something of which his hearers are incredulous, they say it
will not butt-shut--one part of the story will not agree and dovetail
with the rest; there is a break in the continuity of the evidence, which
does not unite and make one rod. Such a term is true miners' language.
Indeed, the American backwoodsmen, miners, and so on, are really only
English farmers and labourers transplanted to a freer and larger life.





MIND UNDER WATER

The thud, thud of a horse's hoof does not alarm fish. Basking in the sun
under the bank, a jack or pike lying close to the surface of the water
will remain unmoved, however heavy the sound may be. The vibrations reach
the fish in several ways. There is what we should ourselves call the
noise as conveyed by the air, and which in the case of a jack actually at
the surface may be supposed to reach him direct. Next there is the
vibration passing through the water, which is usually pronounced to be a
good medium. Lastly, there is the bodily movement of the substance of the
water. When the bank is hard and dry this latter amounts only to a slight
shaking, but it frequently happens that the side of a brook or pond is
soft, and "gives" under a heavy weight. Sometimes the edge is even pushed
into the water, and the brook in a manner squeezed. You can see this when
cattle walk by the margin the grassy edge is pushed out, and in a minute
way they may be said to contract the stream. It is in too small a degree
to have the least apparent effect upon the water, but it is different
with the sense of hearing, which is so delicate that the bodily movement
thus caused may be reasonably believed to be very audible indeed to the
jack. The wire fences which are now so much used round shrubberies and
across parks give a very good illustration of the conveyance of sound.
Strung tight by a spanner, the strands of twisted wire resemble a
stringed instrument. If you place your hand on one of the wires and get a
friend to strike it with his stick, say, thirty or forty yards away, you
will distinctly feel it vibrate. If the ear is held close enough you will
hear it, vibration and sound being practically convertible terms. To the
basking jack three such wires extend, and when the cart-horse in the
meadow puts down his heavy hoof he strikes them all at once. Yet, though
fish are so sensitive to sound, the jack is not in the least alarmed, and
there can be little doubt that he knows what it is. A whole herd of
cattle feeding and walking about does not disturb him, but if the light
step--light in comparison--of a man approach, away he goes. Poachers,
therefore, unable to disguise their footsteps, endeavour to conceal them,
and by moving slowly to avoid vibrating the earth, and through it the
water.

In poaching, the intelligence of the man is backed against the
intelligence of the fish or animal, and the poacher tries to get himself
into the ways of the creature he means to snare. That is what really
takes place as seen by us as lookers-on; to the poacher himself, in nine
out of ten cases, it is merely an acquired knack learned from watching
others, and improved by practice. But to us, as lookers-on, this is what
occurs: the man fits himself to the ways of the creature, and for the
time it becomes a struggle between them. It is the same with the Red
Indians, and the white trappers and hunters in wild regions, who depend
much more on their knowledge of the ways and habits of the fur-bearing
animals than upon their skill with the rifle. A man may be an excellent
shot with gun or rifle, and yet be quite incapable of coping on
comparatively equal terms with wild creatures. He is a sportsman,
depending on skill, quick sight, and ready hand--not a hunter. Perhaps
the nearest approach to it in legitimate, English sport is in fly-fishing
and salmon fishing, when the sportsman relies upon his own unassisted
efforts. Deer-stalking, where the sportsman has to reckon on the wind,
and its curious twists and turns in valleys and round rocks, would be a
very near approach to it did the stalker stalk alone. But all this work
is usually done for him by an attendant, a native Highlander; and this
man really does pit his intelligence against that of the stag. The
Highlander actually is a Red Indian, or hunter, and in this sense
struggles with the wild animal. The poacher is the hunter on illegitimate
ground, and with arts which it has been mutually agreed shall not be
employed.

Considered in this sense it is interesting to observe to what extent the
intelligence even of a fish reaches--and I think upon reflection it will
be found that the fish is as clever as any creature could be in its
position. I deny altogether that the cold-blooded fish--looked on with
contempt so far as its intellectual powers are concerned--is stupid, or
slow to learn. On the contrary, fish are remarkably quick, not only under
natural conditions, but quick at accommodating themselves to altered
circumstances which they could not foresee, and the knowledge how to meet
which could not have been inherited. The basking jack is not alarmed at
the cart-horse's hoofs, but remains quiet, let them come down with ever
so heavy a thud. He has observed that these vibrations never cause him
any injury. He hears them at all periods of the day and night, often with
long intervals of silence and with every possible variation. Never once
has the sound been followed by injury or by anything to disturb his
peace. So the rooks have observed that passing trains are harmless, and
will perch on the telegraph wires or poles over the steam of the roaring
locomotive. Observation has given them confidence. Thunder of wheels and
immense weight in motion, the open furnace and glaring light, the faces
at the long tier of windows--all these terrors do not ruffle a feather. A
little boy with a wooden clapper can set a flock in retreat immediately.
Now the rooks could not have acquired this confidence in the course of
innumerable generations; it is not hereditary; it is purely what we
understand by intelligence. Why are the rooks afraid of the little boy
with the clapper? Because they have noticed his hostile intent. Why is
the basking jack off the instant he hears the light step of a man?

He has observed that after this step there have often followed attempts
to injure him; a stone has been flung at him, a long pole thrust into the
water; he has been shot at, or felt the pinch of a wire. He remembers
this, and does not wait for the attempt to be repeated, but puts himself
into safety. If he did not realise that it was a man--and a possible
enemy--he would not trouble. The object consequently of the tricks of the
poacher is to obliterate himself. If you can contrive to so move, and to
so conduct yourself that the fish shall not recognise you as his enemy,
you can do much as you please with him, and in varying degrees it is the
same with animals. Think a moment by what tokens a fish recognises a man.
First, his light, and, compared with other animals, brisk step--a
two-step instead of a four-step, remember; two feet, not four hoofs.
There is a difference at once in the rhythm of the noise. Four hoofs can
by no possibility produce the same sound, or succession of sounds, as is
made even by four feet--that is, by two men. The beats are not the same.
Secondly, by his motions, and especially the brisk motions of the arms.
Thirdly, by this briskness itself; for most animals, except man, move
with a slow motion--paradox as it may seem--even when they are going
along fast. With them it is usually repose in action. Fourthly, and this
is rather curious--experience seems to show that fish, and animals and
birds certainly, recognise man by his hat or cap, to which they have a
species of superstitious dislike.

Hats are generally of a different hue to the rest of the suit, for one
thing; and it was noted, a century ago, that wild creatures have a
particular objection to a black hat. A covering to the head at all is so
Opposite to their own ideas that it arouses suspicion, for we must
remember that animals look on our clothes as our skin. To have a black
skin over the hair of the head is somewhat odd. By all these signs a fish
knows a man immediately, and as certainly as any creature moving on land
would know him. There is no instinctive or hereditary fear of man at
all--it is acquired by observation (which a thousand facts demonstrate);
so that we are quite justified in believing that a fish really does
notice some or all of these attributes of its enemy. What the poacher or
wild hunter has to do is to conceal these attributes. To hide the
two-step, he walks as slowly as possible, not putting the foot down hard,
but feeling the ground first, and gradually pressing it. In this way
progress may be made without vibration. The earth is not shaken, and does
not communicate the sound to the water. This will bring him to the verge
of the place where the fish is basking.

Very probably not only fish, but animals and some birds hear as much by
the vibration of the earth as by the sound travelling in the atmosphere,
and depend as much upon their immediate perception of the slightest
tremor of the earth as upon recognition by the ear in the manner familiar
to ourselves. When rabbits, for instance, are out feeding in the grass,
it is often possible to get quite close to them by walking in this way,
extremely slowly, and carefully placing the foot by slow degrees upon the
ground. The earth is then merely pressed, and not stepped upon at all, so
that there is no jar. By doing this I have often moved up within gunshot
of rabbits without the least aid from cover. Once now and then I have
walked across a field straight at them. Something, however, depends on
the direction of the wind, for then the question of scent comes in. To
some degree it is the same with hares. It is certainly the case with
birds, as wood-pigeons, a flock of them, will remain feeding only just
the other side of the hedge; but, if you stamp the earth, will rise
instantly. So will rooks, though they will not fly far if you are not
armed. Partridges certainly secure themselves by their attention to the
faint tremor of the ground. Pheasants do so too, and make off, running
through the underwood long before any one is in sight. The most sensitive
are landrails, and it is difficult to get near them, for this reason.
Though the mowing-grass must conceal an approaching person from them as
it conceals them from him, these birds change their positions, no matter
how quietly he walks. Let him be as cunning as he will, and think to cut
off corners and cross the land-rail's retreat, the bird baffles him nine
times in ten. That it is advised of the direction the pursuer takes by
the vibration of the surface is at least probable. Other birds sit, and
hope to escape by remaining still, till they detect the tremor coming
direct towards them, when they rise.

Rain and dry weather change the susceptibility of the surface to vibrate,
and may sometimes in part account for the wildness or apparent tameness
of birds and animals. Should any one doubt the existence of such tremors,
he has only to lie on the ground with his ear near the surface; but,
being unused to the experiment, he will at first only notice the heavier
sounds, as of a waggon or a cart-horse. In recent experiments with most
delicate instruments devised to show the cosmic vibration of the earth,
the movements communicated to it by the tides, or by the "pull" of the
sun and moon, it has been found almost impossible as yet to carry out the
object, so greatly are these movements obscured by the ceaseless and
inexplicable vibrations of the solid earth. There is nothing unreasonable
in the supposition that, if an instrument can be constructed to show
these, the ears of animals and birds--living organisms, and not iron and
steel--should be able to discover the tremors of the surface.

The wild hunter can still further check or altogether prevent observation
by moving on hands and knees, when his weight is widely distributed. In
the particular instance of a fish he endeavours to come to the margin of
the water at the rear of the fish, whose eyes are so placed that it can
see best in front. When he has arrived at the margin, and has to rear
himself up, if from hands and knees, or, if already upright, when he
commences his work, he tries to conceal his arms, or, rather, to minimise
their peculiar appearance as much as practicable by keeping them close to
his sides. All this time I am supposing that you are looking at the
poacher from the fish. To a fish or any wild animal the arms of a man are
suspicious. No other creature that they know possesses these singular
appurtenances, which move in almost any direction, and yet have nothing
to do with locomotion. You may be sure that this great difference in the
anatomical construction of a man is recognised by all wild animals once
they are compelled for their own safety to observe him. Arms are so
entirely opposite to all the varieties of limb possessed by the varieties
of living creatures.

Can you put yourselves in the position of either of these creatures--moving
on all-fours, on wings, or by the aid of a membraneous tail and fins, and
without arms, and imagine how strange the arms of a man must look?
Suppose yourself with your arms tucked to your sides under the fur of an
animal; something of the idea may be gathered by putting on a cloak
without sleeves or armholes. At once it will be apparent how helpless all
creatures are in comparison with man. It is true that apes are an
exception; yet their arms are also legs, and they are deficient in the
power of the thumb. Man may be defined as an animal with arms. While the
creatures of the field or the water have no cause to fear him they do not
observe him, but the moment they learn that he is bent on their
destruction they watch him narrowly, and his arms are, above all, the
part which alarms them. To them these limbs are men's weapons--his tusks,
and tusks which strike and wound afar. From these proceed an invisible
force which can destroy where it would seem the intervening distance
alone would afford safety. The sharp shot, the keen hook, the lacerating
wire, the spear--everything which kills or wounds, comes in some manner
or other from the arms, down to the stone or the primitive knob-kerrie.
Consequently animals, birds, and fishes not only in our own, but in the
wildest countries, have learned to watch and to dread man's arms. He
raises his arms, and in an instant there shoots forth a bright flash of
flame, and before the swift wings can beat the air again the partridge is
dashed to the ground.

So long as a gun is carried under the arm--that is, with the arms close
to the sides--many birds will let the sportsman approach. Rabbits will do
the same. Rabbits have one advantage (and perhaps only one): being
numerous and feeding out by daylight, all kinds of experiments can be
tried on them, while hares are not so easily managed. Suppose a rabbit
feeding, and any one with a gun creeping up beside the hedge, while the
gun is kept down and the arms down the rabbit remains still; the instant
the arms are lifted to point the gun, up he sits, or off he goes. You
have only to point your arm at a rook, without any gun, to frighten him.
Bird-keepers instinctively raise their arms above their heads, when
shouting, to startle birds. Every creature that has ever watched man
knows that his arms are dangerous. The poacher or wild hunter has to
conceal his arms by reducing their movements to a minimum, and by
conducting those movements as slowly as possible.

To thoroughly appreciate the importance which animals of all kinds put on
the motions of the upper limbs, and to put one's self quite in their
position, one has only to recall to mind the well-known trick of the
Australian bushrangers. "Bail up!" is their order when they suddenly
produce their revolvers; "Bail up!" they shout to the clerks of the bank
they are about to sack, to the inmates of a house, or to the travellers
they meet on the road. "Hold your arms above your head" is the meaning;
and, if it is not immediately obeyed, they fire. They know that every man
has a pistol in his pocket or belt; but he cannot use it if compelled to
keep his arms high over his head. One or more of the band keep a sharp
look-out on the upheld arms while the rest plunder; and, if any are
lowered--bang! Like the animals, they know the extreme danger to be
apprehended from movements of the human arms. So long as the human arms
are "bailed" (though in this case in an opposite direction, i.e. held
down), animals are not afraid. Could they make us "bail up," we should be
helpless to injure them. Moving his arms as gently as possible, with the
elbows close to his sides, the poacher proceeds to slowly push his rod
and wire loop towards the basking jack. If he were going to shoot
partridges at roost on the ground, he would raise his gun in an equally
slow and careful manner. As a partridge is a small bird, and stands at
about a shilling in the poacher's catalogue, he does not care to risk a
shot at one, but likes to get several at once. This he can do in the
spring, when the birds have paired and remain so near together, and again
in the latter part of the summer, when the coveys are large, not having
yet been much broken up by the sportsmen. These large coveys, having
enjoyed an immunity from disturbance all through the summer, wandering at
their own will among clover and corn, are not at all difficult to
approach, and a shot at them through a gap in a hedge will often bring
down four or five. Later on the poacher takes them at roost. They roost
on the ground in a circle, heads outwards, much in the same position as
the eggs of a lapwing. The spot is marked; and at night, having crept up
near enough, the poacher fires at the spot itself rather than at the
birds, with a gun loaded with a moderate charge of powder, but a large
quantity of shot, that it may spread wide. On moderately light nights he
can succeed at this game. It is in raising the arms to point the gun that
the risk of alarming the birds has to be met; and so with a hare sitting
in a form in daytime. Lift your arms suddenly, and away she goes; keep
your arms still, and close to your side, and she will sit till you have
crept up actually to her very side, and can pounce on her if you choose.

Sometimes, where fish have not been disturbed by poachers, or loafers
throwing stones and otherwise annoying them, they will not heed a
passer-by, whose gentle walk or saunter does not affright them with brisk
emotion, especially if the saunterer, on espying them, in no degree
alters his pace or changes his manner. That wild creatures immediately
detect a change of manner, and therefore of mood, any one may demonstrate
for himself They are as quick to see it as the dog, who is always with
his master, and knows by the very way he puts a book on the table what
temper he is in. When a book goes with a bang on the table the dog creeps
under it. Wild creatures, too, catch their manners from man. Walk along a
lane with your hands in your pockets, and you will see twice as much of
the birds and animals, because they will not set themselves to
steadfastly watch you. A quick movement sets wings quickly beating. I
have noticed that even horses in stables do not like visitors with jerky,
brisk, angular ways of moving. A stranger entering in a quiet, easy
manner is not very objectionable, but if he comes in in a bustling,
citizen-like style, it is quite probable that one or other horse will
show a wicked white corner in his eye. It roughs them up the wrong way.
Especially all wild creatures dislike the shuffling, mincing step so
common in towns. That alone will disturb everything. Indeed, I have often
thought that a good and successful wild hunter--like the backwoods. man,
or the sportsman in African bush or Indian jungle--is really made as much
by his feet as his eyes or hands. Unconsciously he feels with his feet;
they come to know the exact time to move, whether a long or short stride
be desirable, and where to put down, not to rustle or cause a cracking
sound, and accommodate themselves to the slope of the ground, touching it
and holding it like hands. A great many people seem to have no feet; they
have boots, but no feet. They stamp or clump, or swing their boots along
and knock the ground at every step; this matters not in most callings,
but if a man wish to become what I have called a wild hunter, he must let
his feet learn. He must walk with hands in his boots. Now and then a
person walks like this naturally, and he will come in and tell you that
he has seen a fish basking, a partridge, a hare, or what not, when
another never gets near anything. This is where they have not been much
disturbed by loafers, who are worse than poachers.

As a rule, poachers are intermittent in their action, and they do not
want to disturb the game, as it makes it wild and interferes with their
profits. Loafers are not intermittent--they are always about, often in
gangs, and destroy others' sports without having any themselves. Near
large towns there are places where the fish have to be protected with
hurdles thrown across the stream on poles, that the stones and brickbats
hurled by every rascal passing may not make their very life a burden. A
rural poacher is infinitely preferable. The difference in the ways of
fish when they have been much disturbed and when they have been let alone
is at at once discerned. No sooner do you approach a fish who has been
much annoyed and driven than he strikes, and a quick-rotating curl on the
surface shows with what vehemence his tail was forced against it. In
other places, if a fish perceives you, he gives himself so slight a
propulsion that the curl hardly rises, and you can see him gliding slowly
into the deeper or overshadowed water. If in terror he would go so
quickly as to be almost invisible. In places where the fish have been
much disturbed the poacher, or any one who desires to watch their habits,
has to move as slowly as the hands of a clock, and even then they will
scarcely bear the very sight of a man, sometimes not at all. The least
briskness of movement would send them into the depths out of sight.
Cattle, to whom they are accustomed, walk slowly, and so do horses left
to themselves in the meads by water. The slowest man walking past has
quicker, perhaps because shorter, movements than those of cattle and
horses, so that, even when bushes intervene and conceal his form, his
very ways often proclaim him.

Most people will only grant a moderate degree of intelligence to fish,
linking coldness of blood to narrowness of intellect, and convinced that
there can be but little brain in so small a compass as its head. That the
jack can compete with the dog, of course, is out of the question: but I
am by no means prepared to admit that fish are so devoid of sense as
supposed. Not long since an experiment was tried with a jack, an account
of which appeared in the papers. The jack was in a tank, and after awhile
the tank was partly divided by inserting a plate of glass. He was then
hunted round, and notes taken of the number of times he bumped his head
against the plate of glass, and how long it took him to learn that there
was something to obstruct his path. Further statistics were kept as to
the length of his memory when he had learnt the existence of the
glass--that is, to see if he would recollect it several days afterwards.
The fish was some time learning the position of the glass; and then, if
much alarmed, he would forget its position and dash against it. But he
did learn it, and retained his memory some while. It seems to me that
this was a very hard and unfair test. The jack had to acquire the idea of
something transparent, and yet hard as wood. A moment's thought will show
how exactly opposite the qualities of glass are to anything either this
particular fish or his ancestors could have met with--no hereditary
intelligence to aid him, no experience bearing, however slightly, upon
the subject.

Accustomed all his life to transparent water, he had also been accustomed
to find it liquid, and easily parted. Put suddenly face to face with the
transparent material which repelled him, what was he to think? Much the
same effect would be produced if you or I, having been accustomed, of
course, all our lives, to the fluidity of air, which opens for our
passage, were opposed by a solid block of transparent atmosphere. Imagine
any one running for a train, and striking his head with all his might
against such a block. He would rise, shake himself together, and
endeavour to pursue his journey, and be again repelled. More than likely
he would try three times before he became convinced that it really was
something in the air itself which stopped him. Then he would thrust with
his stick and feel, more and more astounded every moment, and scarcely
able to believe his own senses. During the day, otherwise engaged, he
would argue himself into the view that he had made a mistake, and
determine to try again, though more cautiously. But so strong is habit
that if a cause for alarm arose, and he started running, he might quite
probably go with tremendous force up to the solid block of transparent
air, to be hurled back as the jack was.

These are no mere suppositions, for quite recently I heard of a case
which nearly parallels the conduct of the jack. A messenger was
despatched by rail to a shop for certain articles, and was desired to
return by a certain time. The parcel was made up, the man took it, heard
an engine whistle, turned to run, and in his haste dashed himself right
through a plate-glass window into the street. He narrowly escaped
decapitation, as the great pieces of glass fell like the knife of a
guillotine. Cases of people injuring themselves by walking against
plate-glass are by no means uncommon; when the mind is preoccupied it
takes much the same place as the plate of glass in the water and the
jack. Authorities on mythology state that some Oriental nations had not
arrived at the conception of a fluid heaven--of free space; they thought
the sky was solid, like a roof. The fish was very much in the same
position. The reason why fish swim round and round in tanks, and do not
beat themselves against the glass walls, is evidently because they can
see where the water ends. A distinction is apparent between it and the
air outside; but when the plate of glass was put inside the tank the jack
saw water beyond it, or through it. I never see a fish in a tank without
remembering this experiment and the long train of reflections it gives
rise to. To take a fish from his native brook, and to place him suddenly
in the midst of such, to him, inconceivable conditions, is almost like
watching the actual creation of mind. His mind has to be created anew to
meet it, and that it did ultimately meet the conditions shows that even
the fish--the cold-blooded, the narrow-brained--is not confined to the
grooves of hereditary knowledge alone, but is capable of wider and novel
efforts. I thought the jack came out very well indeed from the trial, and
I have mentioned the matter lest some should think I have attributed too
much intelligence to fish.

Other creatures besides fish are puzzled by glass. One day I observed a
robin trying to get in at the fanlight of a hall door. Repeatedly he
struck himself against it, beat it with his wings, and struggled to get
through the pane. Possibly there was a spider inside which tempted him;
but allowing that temptation, it was remarkable that the robin should so
strive in vain. Always about houses, he must have had experience of the
properties of glass, and yet forgot it so soon. His ancestors for many
generations must have had experience of glass, still it did not prevent
him making many trials. The slowness of the jack to learn the
impenetrable nature of the glass plate and its position is not the least
indication of lack of intelligence. In daily life we constantly see
people do things they have observed injure them, and yet, in spite of
experience, go and do the same again.

The glass experiment proves to me that the jack, like all other
creatures, really has a latent power of intelligence beyond that brought
into play by the usual circumstances of existence. Consider the
conditions under which the jack exists--the jack we have been approaching
so carefully. His limits are the brook, the ponds it feeds, and the
ditches that enter it. He can only move a short distance up the stream
because there is a high hatch, nor can he go far down because of a mill;
if he could, the conditions would be much the same; but, as a matter of
fact, the space he has at his command is not much. The running water, the
green flags, the lesser fishes, the water-rats, the horses and cattle on
the bank--these are about all the things that he is likely to be
interested in. Of these only the water, the lesser fishes, the flags, and
the bottom or sides of the brook, are actually in his touch and complete
understanding. As he is unable to live out of water, the horse on the
bank, in whose very shadow he sometimes lies, might be a mile away for
aught it concerns him. By no possible means can he discover anything
about it. The horse may be itself nothing more than a shadow, unless in a
shallow place he steps in and splashes. Night and day he knows, the cool
night, and the sunbeams in which he basks; but he has no way of
ascertaining the nature of anything outside the water. Centuries spent in
such conditions could add but little to his experience.

Does he hear the stream running past him? Do the particles of water, as
they brush his sides and fins, cause a sound, as the wind by us? While he
lurks beneath a weed in the still pool, suddenly a shoal of roach rush by
with a sound like a flock of birds whose wings beat the air. The smooth
surface of the still water appears to cover an utter silence, but
probably to the fish there are ceaseless sounds. Water-fowl feeding in
the weedy corners, whose legs depend down into the water and disturb it;
water-rats diving and running along the bottom; water-beetles moving
about; eels in the mud; the lower parts of flags and aquatic grasses
swinging as the breeze ruffles their tips; the thud, thud of a horse's
hoofs, and now and then the more distant roll of a hay-laden waggon. And
thunder--how does thunder sound under the surface? It seems reasonable to
suppose that fish possess a wide gamut of hearing since their other
senses are necessarily somewhat curtailed, and that they are peculiarly
sensitive to vibratory movements is certain from the destruction a charge
of dynamite causes if exploded under water. Even in the deep sea the
discharge of a torpedo will kill thousands of herrings. They are as it
were killed by noise. So that there are grounds for thinking that my
quiet jack in the pool, under the bank of the brook, is most keenly alive
by his sense of hearing to things that are proceeding both out and in the
water. More especially, no doubt, of things in the water itself. With all
this specialised power of hearing he is still circumscribed and limited
to the groove of the brook. The birds fly from field to field, from
valley to mountain, and across the sea. Their experience extends to whole
countries, and their opportunities are constant. How much more fortunate
in this respect than the jack! A small display of intelligence by the
fish is equivalent to a large display by the bird.

When the jack has been much disturbed no one can do more than obtain a
view of him, however skilfully he may conceal himself. The least sign of
further proceedings will send the jack away; sometimes the mere
appearance of the human form is sufficient. If less suspicious, the rod
with the wire attached--or if you wish to make experiments, the rod
without the wire--can be placed in the water, and moved how you choose.





SPORT AND SCIENCE

Kingfisher Corner was the first place I made for when, as a lad, I
started from home with my gun. The dew of September lies long on the
grass, and by the gateway I often noticed wasps that had spent the night
in the bunches, numbed and chilled, crawling up the blades bent into an
arch by the weight of the drops. Thence they got on the gate, where, too,
the flies congregated at that time in the morning; for while it was still
cool at the surface on the ground, the dry wood soon absorbed the heat of
the sun. This warmth brought them to life again, and after getting well
charged with it, the insects flew off to any apples they could discover.
These heavy dews, as the summer declines, keep the grass fresh and green,
and maintain the leaves on hedge and tree; yet they do not reach the
earth, which remains dry. It is a different dew to the spring dew, or
acts in another manner: the spring dews moisten the earth, and from the
arable lands as the sun shines forth you may see the vapour rise and
drift along the surface, like the smoke of a gun on a damp day. The
mottled geometrical giant spiders find their webs thick with this
September dew, which seems as if a little unctuous. Stepping through the
gateway with the morning sun behind me, I saw at each step a fresh circle
of dewdrops gleam, some ruby, some emerald, some brightly white, at the
same distance in front. The angle of refraction advanced as I moved;
there was a point at which the dewdrop shot back a brilliant ray, and
then became invisible, or appeared a mere drop of dull water.

By moonlight there is thus formed a semicircle of light on the grass,
which continually moves before you; it is a halo on the grass-tips. I
noticed this as a boy, and tried all sorts of experiments respecting it,
but never met with any mention of it in books till quite lately, in
Benvenuto Cellini's "Autobiography." He says, "There appeared a
resplendent light over my head, which has displayed itself conspicuously
to all I have thought proper to show it to, but those were very few. This
shining light is to be seen in the morning over my shadow till two
o'clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when
the grass is moist with dew; it is likewise visible in the evening at
sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of in Paris, because the air is
exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could distinguish it there
much plainer than in Italy, where mists are much more frequent; but I can
still see it even here, and show it to others, though not to the same
advantage as in France." Benvenuto thought this one of the most
extraordinary things that had happened to him; and records it after a
wonderful dream, as if it, too, were supernatural. It is, however,
possible that some eyes are so constituted as not to be able to see this
phenomenon in their own case; at least, I have sometimes tried in vain to
get other people to see it. I should not have noticed it had I not been
about at all hours with my gun as a boy. It is much more visible by
moonlight, when the rabbits' white tails go dot, dot, lightly over the
grass, and you are just as likely to shoot at their shadows as at their
bodies. As the scythe of the mower mows a swathe before him, so the
semicircle of light moves in front over the dew, and the grass appears
another tint, as it does after a roller has passed.

In a scientific publication not long since, a letter was published
describing what the writer supposed was indeed something extraordinary.
He had seen a fragment of rainbow--a square piece, as it were--by itself
in the sky, some distance to one side of the sun. In provincial papers
such letters may often be found, and even, until lately, in papers issued
in London; now with accurate accounts of an ordinary halo about the sun,
now with a description of a prismatic cloud round the moon, and one day
some one discovered that there were two currents of air, as the clouds
went in two directions. Now, it is clear enough that none of these
writers had ever been out with a gun or a rod; I mean out all day, and
out in the full sense of the phrase. They had read books of science; from
their language they were thoroughly educated, and felt a deep interest in
natural phenomena. Yet what a marvel was here made out of the commonest
incidents of the sky! Halos about the sun happen continually; the
prismatic band or cloud about the moon is common; so is the detached
rainbow; as for the two currents of air, the clouds often travel in three
directions, occasionally in four. These incidents are no more surprising
to a sportsman than the sunset. I saw them, as a boy, almost day by day,
and recorded the meteors in the evening. It seems to me that I used to
see scores of meteors of various degrees of brightness. Once the path,
the woods, the fields, and the distant hills were lit as if with a
gigantic electric light; I was so interested in tracing the well-known
scene so suddenly made apparent in the darkness that it was not for some
seconds I thought of looking for the bolide, but even then I was in time
to see it declining just before extinction. Others who have been out with
their guns have, of course, seen exactly the same things; I do not
mention them to claim for myself any special powers of observation, but
as instances of the way in which sport brings one in contact with nature.
Other sportsmen, too, must have smiled at the marvel made of such
appearances by clever and well-educated, but indoor, people.

This very spring (1883), as I walked about a town in the evening, I used
to listen to find if I could hear any one mention the zodiacal light,
which, just after sunset, was distinctly visible for a fortnight at a
time. It was more than usually distinct, a perfect cone, reaching far up
into the sky among the western stars. No one seemed to observe it, though
it faced them evening after evening. Here was an instance in the opposite
direction--a curious phenomenon, even now rather the subject of
hypothesis than of demonstration, entirely overlooked. The common
phenomenon made a marvel, and the unexplained phenomenon unnoticed. Both
in the eyes of a thoughtful person are equally wonderful; but that point
of view is apart from my present object, which is to show that sport
trains the eye. As a boy, roving about the hedges with my gun, it was my
especial delight to see Mercury, because one of the great astronomers had
never seen that planet, and because in all the books it was stated as
difficult to see. The planet was favourably situated, and I used to see
it constantly after sunset then, pale, and but just outside the sunset
glow, only a little way above the distant hills. Now it is curious, to
remark in passing, that as the sun sets behind a hill the slope of the
hill towards you is often obscured by his light. It appears a luminous
misty surface, rosy-tinted, and this luminous mist hides the trees upon
it, so that the slope is apparently nothing but a broad sweep of colour;
while those hills opposite the sun, even if twice as distant, are so
clearly defined that the smallest object is evident upon them. Sometimes,
instead of the mist on the western hill, there is a blood-like purple
almost startling in its glory of light.

There have been few things I have read of, or studied, which in some
manner or other I have not seen illustrated in this country while out in
the fields. It is said that in the Far West, on the level prairies, when
the snow covers them, you see miles and miles away, a waggon stopping;
you hurry on, and in half a day's journey overtake it, to find the skull
of an ox--so greatly has distance and the mirage of the snow magnified
its apparent size. But a few days since I saw some rooks on the telegraph
wires against a bright sky, but as I approached they flew and resolved
into starlings, so much had the brilliant light deceived me. A hare
sometimes, on the open ground, looks at a distance, in the sunny days of
May when hares are often abroad in daylight, as big as a good-sized dog,
and, except by the leap and the absence of visible tail, can hardly be
told from a dog. The bamboo fishing-rods, if you will glance at the
bamboo itself as you fish, seem the most singular of growths. There is no
wood in the hedge like it, neither ash, hazel, oak, sapling, nor
anything; it is thoroughly foreign, almost unnatural. The hard knots, the
hollow stem, the surface glazed so as to resist a cut with a knife and
nearly turn the steel--this is a tropical production alone. But while
working round the shore presently you come to the sedges, and by the
sedges stands a bunch of reeds. A reed is a miniature bamboo, the same
shape, the same knots, and glazy surface; and on reference to any
intelligent work of botany, it appears that they both belong to the same
order of inward-growing Endogens, so that a few moments bestowed on the
reed by the waters give a clear idea of the tropical bamboo, and make the
singular foreign production home-like and natural.

I found, while I was shooting every day, that the reeds, and ferns, and
various growths through which I pushed my way, explained to me the
jungles of India, the swamps of Central Africa, and the backwoods of
America; all the vegetation of the world. Representatives exist in our
own woods, hedges, and fields, or by the shore of inland waters. It was
the same with flowers. I think I am scientifically accurate in saying
that every known plant has a relative of the same species or genus,
growing wild in this country. The very daisy, the commonest of all,
contains a volume of botany; so do the heaths, and the harebells that
hang so heavily under the weight of the September dew. The horse-tails by
the shore carry the imagination further back into the prehistoric world
when relations of these plants flourished as trees. The horse-tails by
ponds are generally short, about a foot or eighteen inches high, more or
less, but in ditches occasionally there are specimens of the giant
horse-tail as high as the waistcoat, with a stem as thick as a
walking-stick. This is a sapling from which the prehistoric tree can
readily be imagined. From our southern woods the wild cat has been
banished, but still lives in the north as an English representative of
that ferocious feline genus which roams in tropical forests. We still
have the deer, both wild and in parks. Then there are the birds, and
these, in the same manner as plants, represent the inhabitants of the
trackless wilds abroad. Happily the illustration fails mostly in
reptiles, which need not be regretted; but even these, in their general
outline as it were, are presented.

It has long been one of my fancies that this country is an epitome of the
natural world, and that if any one has come really into contact with its
productions, and is familiar with them, and what they mean and represent,
then he has a knowledge of all that exists on the earth. It holds good
even of Australia; for palaeontologists produce fossil remains of
marsupials or kangaroos. As for the polar conditions, when going round
for snipes I constantly saw these in miniature. The planing action of ice
was shown in the ditches, where bridges of ice had been formed; these
slipping, with a partial thaw, smoothed the grasses and mars of teazles
in the higher part of the slope, and then lower down, as the pressure
increased, cut away the earth, exposing the roots of grasses, and
sometimes the stores of acorns laid up by mice. Frozen again in the
night, the glacier stayed, and crumbling earth, leaves, fibres, acorns,
and small dead boughs fell on it. Slipping on as the wind grew warmer, it
carried these with it and deposited them fifty yards from where they
originated. This is exactly the action of a glacier. The ice-mist was
often visible over the frozen water-meadows, where I went for duck, teal,
and at intervals a woodcock in the adjacent mounds. But it was better
seen in the early evening over a great pond, a mile or more long; where,
too, the immense lifting power of water was exemplified, as the merest
trickle of a streamlet flowing in by-and-by forced up the thick ice in
broad sheets weighing hundreds of tons. Then, too, breathing-holes formed
just as they are described in the immense lakes of North America, Lakes
Superior or Michigan, and in the ice of the Polar circle. These were
never frozen over, and attracted wild-fowl.

In August, when there were a few young ducks about, the pond used to
remind me in places of the tropical lakes we heard so much of after the
explorers got through the portentous continent, on account of the growth
of aquatic weeds, the quantity and extent of which no one would credit
who had not seen them. No wonder the explorers could not get through the
papyrus-grown rivers and lakes, for a boat could hardly be forced through
these. Acres upon acres of weeds covered the place, some coming up from a
depth of twelve feet. Some fish are chiefly on the feed in the morning,
and any one who has the courage to get up at five will find them
ravenous. We often visited the place a little after that hour. A swim was
generally the first thing, and I mention a swim because it brings me to
the way in which this mere pond illustrated the great ocean which
encircles the world. For it is well known that the mighty ocean is belted
with currents, the cold water of the Polar seas seeking the warmth of the
Equator, and the warm water of the Equator floating--like the Gulf
Stream--towards the Pole, floating because (I think I am right) the warm
water runs on the surface. The favourite spot for swimming in our pond
was in such a position that a copse cast a wide piece of water there into
deep shadow all the morning up till ten o'clock at least. At six in the
morning this did not matter, all the water was of much the same
temperature; having been exposed to the night everywhere, it was cold of
course.

But after ten the thing was different; by that time the hot reaper's sun
had warmed the surface of the open water on which the rays fell almost
from the moment the sun rose. Towards eleven o'clock the difference in
temperature was marked; but those who then came to bathe, walking along
the shore or rowing, dipped their hands in and found the water warm, and
anticipated that it would be equally so at the bathing-place. So it was
at the surface, for the warm water had begun to flow in, and the cold
water out, rather deeper, setting up, in fact, an exact copy of the
current of the ocean, the shadowed part by the copse representing the
Polar area. Directly any one began to swim he found the difference, the
legs went down into cold water, and in many cases cramp ensued with
alarming results and danger. Down to the chest it was warm, quite warm,
while the feet were very cold. Not much imagination is needed to conceive
the effect on persons not used to rough bathing, and even a strong man
might suffer. People insisted that these chills and cramps were caused by
cold springs rising at the bottom, and could not be argued out of that
belief. As a matter of fact there was not a single spring over the whole
extent of the bottom. That part in particular was often dry, not from dry
weather, but as the water of the pond was drawn away. Let it rain as much
as it would, no spring ever broke up there. The cold currents were
produced by the shadow of the copse, and, had the trees been felled,
would have disappeared. That would have been like letting the sun of the
Equator shine on the Polar seas.

After a storm of wind the lee shore was marked with a dark-green line of
weeds and horse-tails, torn up and drifted across, which had been thrown
up by the little breakers beyond the usual level of the water. A mass of
other weeds and horse-tails, boughs and leaves, remained floating; and
now was seen a reversal of the habits of fishes. Every one knows that
fishes seek the windward shore in a breeze for the insects blown in; but
now, while the gale, though subsiding, still rippled the water, the best
place to fish was on the lee shore, just at the edge of the drifted
weeds. Various insects probably were there washed away from the green
raft to which they had clung. The water being often lowered by drawing
hatches, the level changed frequently; and as storms of wind happened at
different levels, so there were several little raised beaches showing
where the level had been, formed of washed gravel and stones--the
counterpart, in fact, of the raised beaches of the geologists. When the
water was almost all drawn off, then there was a deep winding channel in
the mud of the bottom, along which trickled a little streamlet which fed
the pond. The sun hardening the mud, it was possible by-and-by to walk to
the edge of the channel, where it could be seen that the streamlet ran
five or six feet deep between precipitous banks of mud.

Near where the stream first entered the pond the deposit was much deeper,
for this five feet of alluvium had, in fact, been brought down by one
small brook in the course of little more than fifty years. The pond had
been formed fifty years previously, but already in so short a period.
geologically speaking, all that end was silting up, and the little brook
was making a delta, and a new land was rising from the depths of the
wave. This is exactly what has happened on an immensely larger scale in
the history of the earth, and any one who had seen it, and knew the
circumstances, could comprehend the enormous effects produced in
geological time by rivers like the Ganges, the Amazon, or Nile. Going by
with a gun so frequently, one could not help noticing these things, and
remembering them when reading Lyell's "Geology," or Maury's book on the
sea, or the innumerable treatises bearing on the same interesting
questions. Whether en route for the rabbit-ground, or looking for
water-fowl, or later for snipe, I never passed by without finding
something, often a fragment of fossil washed from the gravel or sand by
the last storm.




NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER

The changes in the fauna of the inland counties brought about by the
favour shown to certain species are very remarkable. The alterations
caused by the preservation of pheasants have reached their limit. No
further effects are likely to be produced, even if pheasant-preserving
should be carried to a still greater extent, which itself is improbable.
One creature at least, the pine-marten, has been exterminated over
Southern England, and is now only to be seen--in the stuffed state--in
museums. It may be roughly described as a large tree-weasel, and was shot
down on account of its habit of seizing pheasants at roost. The polecat
is also practically extinct, though occasional specimens are said to
occur. These two animals could not be allowed to exist in any preserve.
But it is in the list of birds that the change is most striking. Eagles
are gone: if one is seen it is a stray from Scotland or Wales; and so are
the buzzards, except from the moors. Falcons are equally rare: the little
merlin comes down from the north now and then, but the peregrine falcon
as a resident or regular visitor is extinct. The hen-harrier is still
shot at intervals; but the large hawks have ceased out of the daily life,
as it were, of woods and fields. Horned owls are becoming rare; even the
barn-owl has all but disappeared from some districts, and the wood-owl is
local. The raven is extinct--quite put out. The birds are said to exist
near the sea-coast; but it is certain that any one may walk over inland
country for years without seeing one. These, being all more or less birds
of prey, could not but be excluded from pheasant-covers. All these birds,
however, would probably resume their ancient habitations in the course of
five-and-twenty years if permitted to do so. They exist plentifully at no
great distance--judged as such strong flyers judge distance; and if they
found that they were unmolested they would soon come back from the
extremities of the land.

But even more remarkable than the list of birds driven away is the list
of those creatures, birds and animals, which have stood their ground in
spite of traps, guns, and dogs. Stoats and weasels are always shot when
seen, they are frequently trapped, and in every manner hunted to the
death and their litters destroyed--the last the most effectual method of
extermination. But in spite of the unceasing enmity directed against
them, stoat and weasel remain common. They still take their share of
game, both winged and ground. Stoat and weasel will not be killed out. As
they are both defenceless creatures, and not even swift of foot, being
easily overtaken in the open, their persistent continuance is curious. If
any reason can be assigned for it, it must be because they spend much of
their time in buries, where they are comparatively safe, and because they
do not confine themselves to woods, but roam cornfields and meadows.
Certainly, if man has tried to exterminate any creature, he has tried his
hardest to get rid of these two, and has failed. It is even questionable
whether their numbers show any appreciable diminution. Kept down to the
utmost in one place, they flourish in another. Kestrel and sparrowhawk
form a parallel among winged creatures. These two hawks have been shot,
trapped, and their eggs destroyed unsparingly: they remain numerous just
the same. Neither of them choose inaccessible places for their eyries;
neither of them rear large broods. The sparrowhawk makes a nest in a
tree, often in firs; the kestrel lays in old rooks', crows', or magpies'
nests. Both the parents are often shot on or near the nest, and the eggs
broken. Sometimes the young are permitted to grow large enough to fly,
and are then shot down after the manner of rook-shooting. Nevertheless
kestrels are common, and sparrowhawks, if not quite so numerous, are in
no degree uncommon. Perhaps the places of those killed are supplied by
birds from the great woods, moors, and mountains of the north.

A third instance is the crow. Hated by all gamekeepers, and sportsmen, by
farmers, and every one who has anything to do with country life, the crow
survives. Cruel tyrant as he is to every creature smaller than himself,
not a voice is raised in his favour. Yet crows exist in considerable
numbers. Shot off in some places, they are recruited again from others
where there is less game preservation. The case of the crow, however, is
less striking than that of the two hawks; because the crow is a
cosmopolitan bird, and if every specimen in the British Isles were
destroyed to-day, there would be an influx from abroad in a very short
time. The crow is, too, partly a sea-coast feeder, and so escapes. Still,
to any one who knows how determined is the hostility to his race shown by
all country people, his existence in any number must be considered
remarkable. His more powerful congener the raven, as has been pointed
out, is practically extinct in southern counties, and no longer attacks
the shepherd's weakly lambs. Why, then, does the crow live on? Wherever a
pair of ravens do exist the landowner generally preserves them now, as
interesting representatives of old times. They are taken care of; people
go to see them; the appearance of eggs in the nest is recorded. But the
raven does not multiply. Barn-owls live on, though not in all districts.
Influenced by the remonstrance of naturalists, many gentlemen have
stopped the destruction of owls; but a custom once established is not
easily put an end to.

Jays and magpies have also been subjected to a bitter warfare of
extermination. Magpies are quite shot off some places; in others they
exist sparingly; here and there they may be found in fair numbers.
Occasionally their nests are preserved--indeed, the growing tendency is
to spare. Still, they have been shot off rigorously, and have survived
it. So have jays. In large woods--particularly where there is much
fir--jays are so numerous that to destroy them seems almost impossible.
Another bird that has defied the gun and trap is the green woodpecker,
which used to be killed for alleged destruction of timber. Woodpeckers
are not now so ceaselessly killed, though the old system of slaying them
is common enough. They have defied not only gun and trap, but the cunning
noose placed at the mouth of their holes.

Twenty creatures, furred and feathered, have undergone severe persecution
since the extension of pheasant-covers, and of these the first nine have
more or less succumbed--namely, pine-marten, polecat, eagle, buzzard,
falcon, kite, horned owl, harrier, and raven. The remaining eleven have
survived--namely, stoat, weasel, rat, crow, kestrel, sparrowhawk, brown
and barn owl, jay, magpie, and woodpecker. Pheasants of themselves are
not responsible for all this warfare and all these changes; but the
pheasant-cover means more than pheasants, or rather has done. Rabbits
required even more protection from furred enemies; the head of rabbits
kept up in many places practically paid the keeper's wages. This warfare
in its fiercest form may be roughly said to be coeval with the invention
of the percussion gun, and to have raged now for over half a century. The
resistance, therefore, of the various species has been fairly tested, and
we may reasonably conclude that no further disappearance will take place,
unless by the destruction of woods themselves. One new bird only has been
introduced into England since the pheasant--the red-legged partridge
which seems to be fairly established in some districts, not to the entire
satisfaction of sportsmen. One new bird has also been introduced into
Scotland--in this case a re-introduction. The magnificent capercailzie is
now flourishing again in the north, to the honour of those who laboured
for its restoration. In these notes I have not included attempts at
acclimatisation, as that of the wild turkey from North America, which has
partly succeeded. Beavers, too, have been induced to resume possession of
their ancient streams under careful supervision, but they are outside
present consideration. While England has thus lost some species and
suffered a diminution of several, other countries have been supplied from
our streams and woods and hedgerows. England has sent the sparrow to the
United States and Australia; also the nightingale, rabbit, salmon, trout,
and sweet-briar.

It is quite open to argument that pheasant-covers have saved as well as
destroyed. Wood-pigeons could scarcely exist in such numbers without the
quiet of preserved woods to breed in; nor could squirrels. Nor can the
rarity of such birds as the little bearded tit be charged on game. The
great bustard, the crane, and bittern have been driven away by
cultivation. The crane, possibly, has deserted us wilfully; since
civilisation in other countries has not destroyed it. And then the
fashion of making natural history collections has much extended of recent
years: so much so, that many blame too ardent collectors for the
increasing rarity of birds like the crossbill, waxwing, hoopoe, golden
oriole, and others which seem to have once visited this country more
commonly than at present.




THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT

How much the breeding of pheasants has told upon the existence of other
creatures in fur and feathers I have already shown; and much the same
thing is true of the preservation of trout. There is this difference,
however: that while the pheasant has now produced its utmost effect, the
alterations due to trout are increasing. Trout are now so highly and so
widely preserved that the effect cannot but be felt. Their preservation
in the numbers now considered necessary entails the destruction of some
and the banishment of other creatures. The most important of these is the
otter. Guns, dogs, traps set under water so as not to be scented; all
modes of attack are pressed into the service, and it is not often that he
escapes. When traces of an otter were found, a little while since, in the
Kennet--he had left his mark on the back of a trout--the fact was
recorded with as much anxiety as if a veritable wolf had appeared. With
such animosity has the otter been hunted that he is becoming one of the
rarest of wild animals here in the south. He is practically extinct on
the majority of southern streams, and has been almost beaten off the
Thames itself. But the otter is not likely to be exterminated in the
sense that the wolf has been. Otters will be found elsewhere in England
long after the last of them has disappeared from the south. Next the pike
must be ousted from trout-streams. Special nets have been invented by
which pike can be routed from their strongholds. Much hunting about
quickens the intelligence of the pike to such a degree that he cannot be
secured in the ordinary manner; he baffles the net by keeping close to
the bank, behind stones, or by retiring to holes under roots. Perch have
to go as well as pike; and then comes the turn of birds.

Herons, kingfishers, moorhens, coots, grebes, ducks, teal, various
divers, are all proscribed on behalf of trout. Herons are regarded as
most injurious to a fishery. As was observed a century ago, a single
heron will soon empty a pond or a stretch of brook. As their long necks
give them easy command of a wide radius in spying round them, it is
rather difficult to shoot them with a shot-gun; but with the small-bore
rifles now made no heron is safe. They are generally shot early in the
morning. Were it not for the fact that herons nest like rooks, and that
heronries are valued appurtenances in parks, they would soon become
scarce. Kingfishers prey on smaller fish, but are believed to eat almost
as many as herons. Kingfishers resort in numbers to trout nurseries,
which are as traps for them: and there they are more than decimated. Owls
are known to take fish occasionally, and are therefore shot. The greatest
loss sustained in fisheries takes place in the spawning season, and again
when the fry are about. Some students of fish-life believe that almost
all wild-fowl will swallow the ova and fry of trout. It must be
understood that I am not here entering into the question whether all
these are really so injurious; I am merely giving a list of the "dogs
with a bad name." Moorhens and coots are especially disliked because they
are on or near the water day and night, and can clear off large
quantities of fry. Grebes (di-dappers or dabchicks) are similar in habit,
but less destructive because fewer. Ducks are ravenous devourers; teal
are equally hated. The various divers which occasionally visit the
streams are also guilty. Lastly, the swan is a well-known trout-pirate.
Besides these. the two kinds of rat--land and water--have a black mark
against them. Otter, pike, perch, heron, kingfisher, owl, moorhen, coot,
grebe, diver, wild-duck, swan, teal, dipper, land-rat, and
water-rat--altogether sixteen creatures--are killed in order that one may
flourish. Although none of these, even in the south of England--except
the otter--has yet been excluded, the majority of them are so thinned
down as to be rarely seen unless carefully sought.

To go through the list: otters are practically excluded; the pike is
banished from trout streams but is plentiful in others; so too with
perch; herons, much reduced in numbers; owls, reduced; kingfishers,
growing scarce; coots, much less numerous because not permitted to nest;
grebes, reduced; wild-duck, seldom seen in summer, because not permitted
to nest; teal, same; swan, not permitted on fisheries unless ancient
rights protect it; divers, never numerous, now scarcer; moorhens, still
fairly plentiful because their ranks are constantly supplied from moats
and ponds where they breed under semi-domestic conditions. The draining
of marsh-lands and levels began the exile of wild-fowl; and now the
increasing preservation of trout adds to the difficulties under which
these birds strive to retain a hold upon inland waters. The Thames is too
long and wide for complete exclusion; but it is surprising how few
moorhens even are to be seen along the river. Lesser rivers are still
more empty, as it were, of life. The great osier-beds still give shelter
to some, but not nearly so many as formerly. Up towards the spring-heads,
where the feeders are mere runlets, the scarcity of wild-fowl has long
been noticed. Hardly a wild-duck is now seen; one or two moorhens or a
dabchick seem all. Coots have quite disappeared in some places: they are
shot on ponds, having an ill reputation for the destruction of the fry of
coarse or pond fish, as well as of trout. Not all these changes, indeed,
are attributable to trout alone; but the trout holds a sort of official
position and leads the van. Other southern rivers, with the exception of
the Thames, are for the most part easily preserved.

They run through cultivated country, with meadows or cornfields, woods or
copses, and rarely far through open, unenclosed land. A stranger, and
without permission, would often find it difficult to walk half a mile
along the bank of such a stream as this. Consequently, if it is desired
to preserve it, the riparian owners can do so to the utmost, and the
water-fowl considered injurious to fish can as easily be kept down. It is
different in the north, for instance, where the streams have a background
of moors, mountains, tarns, and lakes. In these their fastnesses birds
find some security. From the coast they are also recruited; while on our
southern coasts it is a source of lament that wild-fowl are not nearly so
plentiful as formerly. Of course in winter it often happens that a flock
of wild-fowl alight in passing; but how long do they stay? The real
question is, how many breed? Where trout are carefully preserved, very
few indeed; so that it is evident trout are making as much difference as
the pheasants. Trout preservation has become much more extended since the
fish has been studied and found to be easily bred. Advertisements are
even put forward recommending people to keep trout instead of poultry,
since they can be managed with certainty. It seems reasonable, therefore,
to suppose that the influence of trout on wild creatures will continue to
extend for some time yet. Already where trout preservation has been
carefully carried out it has produced a visible impression upon their
ranks. In ten years, if it were abandoned, most of these creatures would
be plentiful again on the waters from which they have been driven; I
should myself be very glad to see many of them back again.

But if preservation has excluded many creatures, it has also saved many.
Badgers, in all probability, would be extinct--really extinct, like the
wolf--were it not for the seclusion of covers. Without the protection
which hunting affords them, foxes would certainly have disappeared. The
stag and fallow-deer are other examples; so, too, the wild white cattle
maintained in a few parks. In a measure the rook owes its existence to
protection; for although naturalists have pointed out its usefulness, the
rook is no favourite with agriculturists. Woodcocks, again, are
protected, and are said to have increased, though it is open to question
if their increased numbers may not be due to other causes. Cultivation
banishes wild geese and snipe, but adds to the numbers of small birds, I
fancy, and very probably to the number of mice. When the country was
three-fourths champaign--open, unenclosed, and uncultivated--it cannot be
supposed that so many grain-eating birds found sustenance as now. The
subject is capable of much development Enough, however, has been said to
show that Nature at present is under artificial restraints; but her
excluded creatures are for the most part ready to return if ever those
restraints are removed.




THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL

There has lately been some discussion about the hovering of kestrels: the
point being whether the bird can or cannot support itself in the air
while stationary, without the assistance of one or more currents of air.
The kestrel is the commonest hawk in the southern parts of England, so
that many opportunities occur to observe his habits; and there ought not
to be any doubt in the matter. It is even alleged that it will go far to
decide the question of the possibility of flight or of the construction
of an aerial machine. Without entering into this portion of the
discussion, let us examine the kestrel's habits.

This hawk has a light easy flight, usually maintaining an altitude a
little lower than the tallest elms, but higher than most trees. He will
keep this particular altitude for hours together, and sweep over miles of
country, with only occasional variations--excluding, of course, descents
for the purpose of taking mice. It is usually at this height that a
kestrel hovers, though he is capable of doing it a much greater
elevation. As he comes gliding through the atmosphere, suddenly he shoots
up a little (say, roughly, two or three feet), and then stops short. His
tail, which is broader than it looks, is bent slightly downwards; his
wings beat the air, at the first glance, just as if he was progressing.
Sometimes he seems to oscillate to one side, sometimes to the other; but
these side movements do not amount to any appreciable change of position.
If there be little or no wind (note this) he remains beating the air, to
the eye at least perfectly stationary, perhaps as much as half a minute
or more. He then seems to slip forward about half a yard, as if a pent-up
force was released, but immediately recovers himself and hovers again.
This alternate hovering and slipping forward may be repeated two or three
times: it seems to depend on the bird's judgment as to the chance of
prey. If he does not think a mouse is to be had, at the first slip he
allows himself to proceed. If the spot be likely, or (what is still more
tempting) if it is near a place where he has taken prey previously, he
will slip and bring up several times. Now and then he will even fetch a
half-circle when his balance or impetus (or both) is quite exhausted, and
to return to the same spot and recommence. But this is not often, as a
rule, after two or three slips he proceeds on his voyage. He will repeat
the same round day after day, if undisturbed, and, if the place be at all
infested with mice, he will come to it three or four times a day. There
is, therefore, every chance of watching him, if you have once found his
route. Should he spy a mouse, down he comes, quick but steady, and very
nearly straight upon it. But kestrels do not always descend upon prey
actually in view. Unless I am much mistaken, they now and then descend in
a likely spot and watch like a cat for a minute or two for mice or
beetles. For rest they always seek a tree.

Now, having briefly sketched his general manner, let us return and
examine the details. In the first place, he usually rises slightly, with
outstretched wings, as if about to soar at the moment of commencing
hovering. The planes of the wings are then inclined, and meet the air. At
the instant of stopping, the tail is depressed. It appears reasonable to
conjecture that the slight soaring is to assist the tail in checking his
onward course, and to gain a balance. Immediately the wings beat rapidly,
somewhat as they do in ordinary flight but with a more forward motion,
and somewhat as birds do when about to perch on an awkward ledge, as a
swallow at an incomplete nest under an eave. The wings look more, in
front, as if attached to his neck. In an exaggerated way ducks beat the
air like this, with no intention of rising at all, merely to stretch
their wings. The duck raises himself as he stands on the ground,
stretches himself to his full height, and flaps his wings horizontally.
The kestrel's wings strike downwards and a very little forwards, for his
natural tendency is to slip forwards, and the object of slightly
reversing his vanes is to prevent this and yet at the same time to
support him. His shape is such that if he were rigid with outstretched
wings he would glide ahead, just as a ship in a calm slowly forges ahead
because of her lines, which are drawn for forward motion. The kestrel's
object is to prevent his slip forwards, and the tail alone will not do
it. It is necessary for him to "stroke" the air in order to keep up at
all; because the moment he pauses gravitation exercises a force much
greater than when he glides.

While hovering there are several forces balanced: first, the original
impetus onwards; secondly, that of the depressed tail dragging and
stopping that onward course; thirdly, that of the wing beating downwards;
and fourthly, that of the wing a very little reversed beating forwards,
like backing water with a scull. When used in the ordinary way the shape
of the wing causes it to exert a downward and a backward pressure. His
slip is when he loses balance: it is most obviously a loss of balance; he
quite oscillates sometimes when it occurs; and now and then I have seen a
kestrel unable to catch himself, and obliged to proceed some distance
before he could hover again. Occasionally, in the slip he loses a foot or
so of elevation, but not always. While actually hovering, his altitude
does not vary an inch. All and each of these movements and the
considerations to which they give rise show conclusively that the act of
hovering is nothing more or less than an act of balancing; and when he
has his balance he will rest a moment with outstretched wings kept still.
He uses his wings with just sufficient force neither to rise nor fall,
and prevents progress by a slightly different stroke.

The next point is, Where does he hover? He hovers any and everywhere,
without the slightest choice. He hovers over meadows, cornfields; over
the tops of the highest downs, sometimes at the very edge of a precipice
or above a chalk quarry; over gardens, waste ground; over the highway;
over summer and other ricks and thatched sheds, from which he sometimes
takes his prey; over stables, where mice abound. He has no preference for
one side of a hedge or grove, and cares not the least on which the wind
blows. His hovering is entirely determined by his judgment as to the
chance of prey. I have seen a kestrel hover over every variety of dry
ground that is to be found.

Next, as to the wind. If any one has read what has preceded upon his
manner of preserving his balance, it must be at once apparent that,
supposing a kestrel were hovering in a calm and a wind arose, he would at
once face it, else his balance could not be kept. Even on the ground
almost all birds face the wind by choice; but the hovering kestrel has no
choice. He must hover facing the wind, or it would upset him: just as you
may often see a rook flung half aback by a sudden gust. Hence has arisen
the supposition that a kestrel cannot hover without a wind. The truth is,
he can hover in a perfect calm, and no doubt could do so in a room if it
were large enough. He requires no current of any kind, neither a
horizontal breeze nor an ascending current. A kestrel can and does hover
in the dead calm of summer days, when there is not the faintest breath of
wind. He will and does hover in the still, soft atmosphere of early
autumn, when the gossamer falls in showers, coming straight down as if it
were raining silk. If you puff up a ball of thistledown it will languish
on your breath and sink again to the sward. The reapers are sweltering in
the wheat, the keeper suffocates in the wood, the carter walks in the
shadow cast by his load of corn, the country-side stares all parched and
cracked and gasps for a rainy breeze. The kestrel hovers just the same.
Could he not do so, a long calm would half starve him, as that is his
manner of preying. Having often spent hours in trees for the purpose of a
better watch upon animals and birds, I can vouch for it that ascending
currents are not frequent--rare, in fact, except in a gale. In a light
air or calm there is no ascending current, or it is imperceptible and of
no use to the kestrel. Such currents, when they do exist, are very local;
but the kestrel's hover is not local: he can hover anywhere. He can do it
in the face of a stiff gale, and in a perfect calm. The only weather he
dislikes is heavy thunder, rain, or hail, during which he generally
perches on a tree; but he can hover in all ordinary rain. He effects it
by sheer power and dexterity of wing. Therefore if the fact has any
bearing upon the problem of flight, the question of currents may be left
out altogether. His facing the wind is, as has been pointed out, only a
proof that he is keeping his balance.

The kestrel is not the only bird that hovers. The sparrowhawk can. So can
all the finches, more or less, when taking seeds from a plant which will
not bear their weight or which they cannot otherwise get at; also when
taking insects on the wing. Sparrows do the same. Larks hover in their
mating season uttering a short song, not the same as when they soar.
Numerous insects can hover: the great dragon-fly will stop dead short in
his rapid flight, and stay suspended till it suits him to advance. None
of these require any current or wind. I do not think that hovering
requires so much strength of wing or such an exercise of force as when
birds rise almost straight up. Snipes do it, and woodcocks; so also
pheasants, rocketing with tremendous effort; so also a sparrow in a
confined court, rising almost straight to the slates. Evidently this
needs great power. Hovering is very interesting; but not nearly so
mysterious as at least one other power possessed by birds.





BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR

Two hawks come over the trees, and, approaching each other, rise higher
into the air. They wheel about for a little without any apparent design,
still rising, when one ceases to beat the air with his wings, stretches
them to their full length, and seems to lean aside. His impetus carries
him forward and upward, at the same time in a circle, something like a
skater on one foot. Revolving round a centre, he rises in a spiral,
perhaps a hundred yards across; screwing upwards, and at each turn
ascending half the diameter of the spiral. When he begins this it appears
perfectly natural, and nothing more than would necessarily result if the
wings were held outstretched and one edge of the plane slightly elevated.
The impulse of previous flight, the beat of strong pinions, and the swing
and rush of the bird evidently suffice for two or three, possibly for
four or five, winding movements, after which the retarding effects of
friction and gravitation ought, according to theory, to gradually bring
the bird to a stop. But up goes the hawk, round and round like a
woodpecker climbing a tree; only the hawk has nothing tangible into which
to stick his claws and to rest his tail against. Those winding circles
must surely cease; his own weight alone must stop him, and those wide
wings outstretched must check his course. Instead of which the hawk rises
as easily as at first, and without the slightest effort--no beat of wing
or flutter, without even a slip or jerk, easily round and round. His
companion does the same; often, perhaps always, revolving the opposite
way, so as to face the first. It is a fascinating motion to watch.

The graceful sweeping curl holds the eye: it is a line of beauty, and
draws the glance up into the heights of the air. The darker upper part of
one is usually visible at the same time as the lighter under part of the
other, and as the dark wheels again the sunlight gleams on the breast and
under wing. Sometimes they take regular curves, ascending in an equal
degree with each; each curve representing an equal height gained
perpendicularly. Sometimes they sweep round in wide circles, scarcely
ascending at all. Again, suddenly one will shoot up almost
perpendicularly, immediately followed by the other. Then they will resume
the regular ascent. Up, like the woodpecker round a tree, till now the
level of the rainy scud which hurries over in wet weather has long been
past; up till to the eye it looks as if they must soon attain to the
flecks of white cloud in the sunny sky to-day. They are in reality far
from that elevation; but their true height is none the less wonderful.
Resting on the sward, I have watched them go up like this through a
lovely morning atmosphere till they seemed about to actually enter the
blue, till they were smaller in appearance than larks at their highest
ascent, till the head had to be thrown right back to see them. This last
circumstance shows how perpendicularly they ascend, winding round a line
drawn straight up. At their very highest they are hardly visible, except
when the under wing and breast passes and gleams in the light.

All this is accomplished with outstretched wings held at full length,
without flap, or beat, or any apparent renewal of the original impetus.
If you take a flat stone and throw it so that it will spin, it will go
some way straight, then rise, turn aside, describe a half-circle, and
fall. If the impetus kept in it, it would soar like the hawk, but this
does not happen. A boomerang acts much in the same manner, only more
perfectly: yet, however forcibly thrown, the impetus soon dies out of a
boomerang. A skater gets up his utmost speed, suddenly stands on one
foot, and describes several circles; but in two minutes comes to a
standstill, unless he "screws," or works his skate, and so renews the
impulse. Even at his best he only goes round, and does not raise his
weight an inch from the ice. The velocity of a bullet rapidly decreases,
and a ball shot from an express rifle, and driven by a heavy charge, soon
begins to droop. When these facts are duly considered, it will soon be
apparent what a remarkable feat soaring really is. The hawk does not
always ascend in a spiral, but every now and then revolves in a circle--a
flat circle--and suddenly shoots up with renewed rapidity. Whether this
be merely sportive wantonness or whether it is a necessity, is impossible
to determine; but to me it does not appear as if the hawk did it from
necessity. It has more the appearance of variation: just as you or I
might walk fast at one moment and slowly at another, now this side of the
street and now the other. A shifting of the plane of the wings would,
however, in all probability, give some impetus: the question is, would it
be sufficient? I have seen hawks go up in sunny and lovely weather--in
fact, they seem to prefer still, calm weather; but, considering the
height to which they attain, no one can positively assert that they do or
do not utilise a current. If they do, they may be said to sail (a hawk's
wings are technically his sails) round half the circle with the wind fair
and behind, and then meet it the other half of the turn, using the
impetus they have gained to surmount the breeze as they breast it.
Granting this mechanical assistance, it still remains a wonderful feat,
since the nicest adjustment must be necessary to get the impetus
sufficient to carry the birds over the resistance. They do not drift, or
very little.

My own impression is that a hawk can soar in a perfectly still
atmosphere. If there is a wind he uses it; but it is quite as much an
impediment as an aid. If there is no wind he goes up with the greater
ease and to the greater height, and will of choice soar in a calm. The
spectacle of a weight--for of course the hawk has an appreciable
weight--apparently lifting itself in the face of gravitation and
overcoming friction, is a very striking one. When an autumn leaf parts on
a still day from the twig, it often rotates and travels some distance
from the tree, falling reluctantly and with pauses and delays in the air.
It is conceivable that if the leaf were animated and could guide its
rotation, it might retard its fall for a considerable period of time, or
even rise higher than the tree.




COUNTRY LITERATURE

I

THE AWAKENING

Four hundred years after the first printed book was sent out by Caxton
the country has begun to read. An extraordinary reflection that twelve
generations should pass away presenting the impenetrable front of
indifference to the printing-press! The invention which travelled so
swiftly from shore to shore till the remote cities of Mexico, then but
lately discovered, welcomed it, for four centuries failed to enter the
English counties. This incredible delay must not be supposed to be due to
any exceptional circumstances or to inquisitorial action. The cause is
found in the agricultural character itself. There has never been any
difficulty in obtaining books in the country other than could be
surmounted with patience. It is the peculiarity of knowledge that those
who really thirst for it always get it. Books certainly came down in some
way or other to Stratford-on-Avon, and the great mind that was growing
there somehow found a means of reading them. Long, long before, when the
printed page had not been dreamed of, the Grecian student, listening at
the school, made his notes on oyster-shells and blade-bones. But here the
will was wanting. There was no prejudice, for no people admired learning
more than the village people, or gave it more willing precedence. It was
simple indifference, which was mistaken for a lack of intelligence, but
it was most certainly nothing of the kind. How great, then, must be the
change when at last, after four hundred years, the country begins to
read!

To read everything and anything! The cottagers in faraway hamlets, miles
from a railway station, read every scrap of printed paper that drifts
across their way, like leaves in autumn. The torn newspapers in which the
grocer at the market town wraps up their weekly purchases, stained with
tallow or treacle, are not burned heedlessly. Some paragraph, some
fragment of curious information, is gathered from the pieces. The
ploughman at his luncheon reads the scrap of newspaper in which his
bread-and-cheese was packed for him. Men read the bits of paper in which
they carry their screws of tobacco. The stone-pickers in spring in the
meadows, often women, look at the bits of paper scattered here and there
before putting them in their baskets. A line here and a line yonder, one
to-day, one to-morrow, in time make material equal to a book. All
information in our day filters through the newspapers. There is no
subject you can name of which you may not get together a good body of
knowledge, often superior, because more recent, than that contained in
the best volumes, by watching the papers and cutting out the paragraphs
that relate to it. No villager does that, but this ceaseless searching
for scraps comes to something like the same thing in a more general
manner.

London newspapers come now to the village and hamlet in all sorts of
ways. Some by post, others by milk-cart, by carrier, by travellers; for
country folk travel now, and invariably bring back papers bought at the
railway bookstalls. After these have been read by the farmers and upper
sort of people who purchased them, the fragments get out through
innumerable channels to the cottages. The regular labourers employed on
the farm often receive them as presents, and take nothing more gladly. If
any one wishes to make a cottager a little present to show friendly
remembrance, the best thing to send is a bundle of newspapers,
especially, of course, if they are illustrated, which will be welcomed,
and not a corner of the contents slurred over. Nothing is so contrary to
fact as the common opinion that the agricultural labourer and his family
are stupid and unintelligent. In truth, there are none who so appreciate
information and they are quite capable of understanding anything that may
be sent them in print.

London papers of various descriptions come to the villages now in greatly
increased numbers, probably fifteen or twenty for one that formerly
arrived, and all these, or some portion of each, are nearly sure to be
ultimately perused by some cottager. At the inns and beer-houses there is
now usually a daily paper, unless the distance is farther than general to
a station, and then there are weeklies with summaries of everything. So
that the London press is accessible at the meanest beer-house, and well
bethumbed and besmeared the blackened sheets are, with holes where clumsy
fingers have gone through. The shepherd in his hut in the lambing season,
when the east wind blows and he needs shelter, is sure to have a scrap of
newspaper with him to pore over in the hollow of the windy downs. In
summer he reads in the shade of the firs while his sheep graze on the
slope beneath. The little country stations are often not stations at all
in the urban idea of such a convenience, being quite distant from any
town, and merely gathering together the traffic from cross-roads. But the
porters and men who work there at times get a good many newspapers, and
these, after looking at them themselves, they take or send up to their
relatives in the village five or six miles away. Everybody likes to tell
another the news; and now that there is such a village demand for papers,
to pass on a paper is like passing the news, and gives a pleasure to
donor and recipient.

So that papers which in days gone by would have stopped where they first
arrived now travel on and circulate. If you had given a cottager a
newspaper a few years since he would have been silent and looked glum. If
you give him one now he says, "Thank you," briskly. He and his read
anything and everything; and as he walks beside the waggon he will pick
up a scrap of newspaper from the roadside and pore over it as he goes.
Girls in service send home papers from London; so do the lads when from
home--and so many are away from home now. Papers come from Australia and
America; the latter are especial favourites on account of the oddities
with which the editors fill the corners. No one ever talks of the
Continent in agricultural places; you hear nothing of France or Germany;
nothing of Paris or Vienna, which are not so very distant in these days
of railways, if distance be measured by miles. London and London news is
familiar enough--they talk of London and of the United States or
Australia, but particularly of the United States. The Continent does not
exist to them; but the United States is a sort of second home, and the
older men who have not gone sigh and say, "If I had 'a emigrated, now you
see, I should 'a done well." There must be an immense increase in the
number of papers passing through country post-offices. That the United
States papers do come there is no doubt, for they are generally taken up
by the cottage people to the farmhouses to show where the young fellows
are who have left the place. But the remarkable fact is not in the
increase of the papers, but in the growth of the desire to read them--the
demand of the country for something to read.

In cottages of the better sort years ago you used to find the most formal
of old prints or coloured pictures on the walls, stiff as buckram,
unreal, badly executed, and not always decent. The favourites now are
cuttings from the _Illustrated London News_ or the _Graphic_, with
pictures from which many cottages in the farthest away of the far country
are hung round. Now and then one may be entered which is perfectly
papered with such illustrations. These pictures in themselves play no
inconsiderable part in educating the young, whose eyes become accustomed
to correct representations of scenes in distant places, and who learn as
much about such places and things as they could do without personally
going. Besides which, the picture being found there is evidence that at
fourth or fifth, or it may be the tenth hand, the paper itself must have
got there, and if it got there it was read.

The local press has certainly trebled in recent times, as may be learned
by reference to any newspaper list and looking at the dates. The export,
so to say, of type, machines, rollers, and the material of printing from
London to little country places has equally grown. Now, these are not
sent out for nothing, but are in effect paid for by the pennies collected
in the crooked lanes and byways of rural districts. Besides the numerous
new papers, there are the old-established ones whose circulation has
enlarged. Altogether, the growth of the local country press is as
remarkable in its way as was the expansion of the London press after the
removal of the newspaper stamp. This is conclusive evidence of the desire
to read, for a paper is a thing unsaleable unless some one wants to read
it. They are for the most part weeklies, and their primary object is the
collection of local information; but they one and all have excerpts from
London publications, often very well selected, and quite amusing if
casually caught up by persons who may have fancied they knew something of
London, current gossip, and the world at large. For you must go from home
to learn the news; and if you go into a remote hamlet and take up the
local paper you are extremely likely to light on some paragraph skilfully
culled which will make an impression on you. It is with these excerpts
that the present argument is chiefly concerned, the point being that they
are important influences in the spread of general information. After the
local gossip has been looked at the purchasers of these prints are sure
to turn to these pieces, which serve them and theirs the most of the week
to absorb.




II

SCARCITY OF BOOKS

Some little traffic in books, or rather pamphlets, goes on now in rural
places through the medium of pedlars. There are not so many pedlars as
was once the case, and those that remain are not men of such substance as
their predecessors who travelled on foot with jewellery, laces, watches,
and similar articles. The packmen who walk round the villages for
tradesmen are a different class altogether: the pedlar does not confine
himself to one district, and he sells for his own profit. In addition to
the pins and ribbons, Birmingham jewellery, dream-books, and penny
ballads, the pedlar now produces a bundle of small books, which are
practically pamphlets, though in more convenient form than the ancient
quartos. They are a miscellaneous lot, from fifty to one hundred and
fifty pages; little monographs on one subject, tales, and especially such
narratives as are drawn up and printed after a great calamity like the
loss of the _Atalanta_. It is a curious fact that country people are much
attracted to the sea, and the story of a shipwreck known to be true
easily tempts the sixpences from their pockets. Dream-books and ballads
sell as they always did sell, but for the rest the pedlar's bundle has
nothing in it, as a rule, more pernicious than may be purchased at any
little shop. Romantic novelettes, reprints of popular and really clever
stories, numbers of semi-religious essays and so on--some only stitched
and without a wrapper--make up the show he spreads open before the
cottage door or the servants at the farmhouse. Often the gipsy women,
whose vans go slowly along the main roads while they make expeditions to
the isolated houses in the fields, bring with them very similar bundles
of publications. The sale of books has thus partly supplanted that of
clothes-pegs and trumpery finery. Neither pedlars nor gipsies would carry
such articles as books unless there was a demand for them, and they
thereby demonstrate the growth of the disposition to read.


There are no other persons engaged in circulating books in the actual
country than these. In the windows of petty shops in villages it is
common to see a local newspaper displayed as a sign that it is sold
there; and once now and then, but not often, a few children's
story-books, rather dingy, may be found. But the keepers of such shops
are not awake to the new condition of things; very likely they cannot
read themselves, and it does not occur to them that the people now
growing up may have different feelings to those that were general in
their own young days. In this inability to observe the change they are
not alone. If it was explained to them, again, they would not know how to
set about getting in a suitable stock; they would not know what to choose
nor where to buy cheaply. Somebody would have to do it all for them.
Practically, therefore, in the actual country there are no other traders
distributing cheap books than pedlars and gipsy women. Coming in thence
to those larger villages which possess a market and are called
towns--often only one long street--there is generally a sort of curiosity
shop, kept perhaps by a cobbler, a carver and gilder, or brazier, where
odds and ends, as old guns and pistols, renovated umbrellas, a stray
portmanteau, rusty fenders, and so forth, are for sale. Inside the window
are a few old books, with the brown and faded gilt covers so common in
days gone by, and on market days these are put outside on the
window-sill, or perhaps a plank on trestles forming a bookstall. The
stray customers have hardly any connection with the growing taste for
reading, being people a little outside the general run--gentlemen with
archaeological or controversial tendencies, who never pass a dingy cover
without going as far as the title-page--visitors, perhaps, at houses in
the neighbourhood wandering round to look at an ancient gateway or
sun-dial left from monastic days. Villagers beginning to read do not care
for this class of work; like children, they look for something more
amusing, and want something to wonder at for their money.

At the post-office there is often an assortment of cheap stationery on
sale, for where one cottager wrote a letter a few years ago ten write
them now. But the shopkeeper--most likely a grocer or storekeeper of some
kind--knows nothing of books, and will tell you, if you ask him, that he
never sells any or has any orders. How should he sell any, pray, when he
does not put the right sort into his window? He does not think people
read: he is occupied with moist sugar. So that in these places literature
is at a standstill. Proceeding onwards to the larger market town, which
really is a town, perhaps a county town, or at least with a railway
station, here one or two stationers may be found. One has a fair trade
almost entirely with the middle-class people of the town; farmers when
they drive in call for stationery, or for books if there is a circulating
library, as there usually is. The villagers do not come to this shop;
they feel that it is a little above them, and they are shy of asking for
three pennyworth of writing-paper and envelopes. If they look in at the
window in passing they see many well-bound books from 5s. to 10s., some
of the more reputable novels, and educational manuals. The first they
cannot afford; for the second they have not yet acquired the taste; the
last repel them. This bookseller, though of course quite of a different
stamp, and a man of business, would probably also declare that the
villagers do not read. They do not come to him, and he is too busy to sit
down and think about it. The other stationer's is a more humble
establishment, where they sell cheap toys, Berlin wool, the weekly London
papers with tales in them, and so on. The villagers who get as far as
this more central town call here for their cheap stationery, their weekly
London novelette, or tin trumpets for the children. But here, again, they
do not order books, and rarely buy those displayed, for exactly the same
reason as in the lesser village towns. The shopkeeper does not understand
what they want, and they cannot tell him. They would know if they saw it;
but till they see it they do not know themselves. There is no medium
between the villager who wants to read and the books he would like. There
is no machinery between the villager who wants to read and the London
publisher. The villager is in utter ignorance of the books in the
publisher's warehouse in London.

The villager who has just begun to read is in a position almost
incomprehensible to a Londoner. The latter has seen books, books, books
from boyhood always around him. He cannot walk down a street, enter an
omnibus, go on a platform without having books thrust under his eyes.
Advertisements a yard high glare at him from every hoarding, railway
arch, and end-house facing a thoroughfare. In tunnels underground, on the
very roofs above, book advertisements press upon his notice. It is
impossible to avoid seeing them, even if he would. Books are
everywhere--at home, at the reading-room, on the way to business; and on
his return it is books, books, books. He buys a weekly paper, and book
advertisements, book reviews, occupy a large part of it. Buy what sort of
print he will--and he is always buying some sort from mere habit--books
are pushed on him. If he is at all a student, or takes an interest--and
what educated Londoner does not?--in some political, scientific, or other
question, he is constantly on the watch for publications bearing upon it.
He subscribes to or sees a copy of one or other of the purely literary
papers devoted to the examination of books, and has not the slightest
difficulty in finding what he wants; the reviews tell him precisely the
thing he requires to know, whether the volume will suit him or not. The
reading Londoner is thus in constant contact with the publisher, as much
as if the publisher spoke to him across the breakfast table.

But the villager has never heard the publisher's name; the villager never
sees a literary review; he has never heard, or, if so, so casually as not
to remember, the name of any literary paper describing books. When he
gets hold of a London paper, the parts which attract him are certainly
not the advertisements; if he sees a book advertised there, it is by
chance. Besides which, the advertisements in London papers are, from
necessity of cost, only useful to those who frequently purchase books or
have some reason for keeping an eye on those that appear. There are
thousands of books on publishers' shelves which have been advertised, of
course, but are not now ever put in the papers. So that when the villager
gets a London paper, as he does now much more frequently, the
advertisements, if he sees them, are not designed for his eye and do not
attract him. He never sees a gaudy poster stuck on the side of the barn;
there are no glazed frames with advertisements in the sheds or hung on
the trees; the ricks are not covered, like the walls of the London
railway stations, with book advertisements, nor are they conspicuous on
the waggons as they are on the omnibuses. When he walks down the village
there are no broad windows piled with books higher than his head--books
with the backs towards him, books with the ornamented cover towards him,
books temptingly open at an illustration: nothing of the sort. There is
not a book to be seen. Some few books are advertised in the local press
and receive notices--only a few, and these generally of a class too
expensive for him. Books of real value are usually dear when first
published. If he goes to a stationer's, as already pointed out, for a few
sheets of writing paper and a packet of envelopes, he sees nothing
displayed there to tempt him. Lastly, he hears no talking about books.
Perhaps the most effective of all advertisements in selling a book is
conversation. If people hear other people continually alluding to, or
quoting, or arguing about a book, they say, "We must have it;" and they
do have it. Conversation is the very life of literature. Now, the
villager never hears anybody talk about a book.




III

THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING



The villager could not even write down what he would like to read, not
yet having reached the stage when the mind turns inwards to analyse
itself. If you unexpectedly put a boy with a taste for reading in a large
library and leave him to himself, he is at a loss which way to turn or
what to take from the shelves. He proceeds by experiment, looking at
cover after cover, half pulling out one, turning over a few leaves of
another, peeping into this, and so on, till something seizes his
imagination, when he will sit down on the steps at once instead of
walking across the room to the luxurious easy-chair. The world of books
is to the villager far more unknown than to the boy in the library, who
has the books before him, while the villager looks into vacancy. What the
villager would like can only be gathered from a variety of little
indications which hint at the unconscious wishes of his mind.

First, the idea that he would require something easy and simple like a
horn-book or primer must be dismissed. Villagers are not so simple by any
means. Nor do they need something written in the plainest language,
specially chosen, as words of one syllable are for children. What is
designed for the village must not be written down to it. The village will
reject rice and corn-flour--it will only accept strong meat. The subject
must be strong, the manner strong, and the language powerful. Like the
highest and most cultured minds--for extremes meet--the intelligence of
the villagers naturally approves the best literature. Those authors whose
works have a world-wide reputation (though totally unknown by name in
hamlets sixty miles from London) would be the most popular. Their
antiquity matters nothing; they would be new in the hamlet. When a
gentleman furnishes a library he chooses representative authors--what are
called library-books--first, forming a solid groundwork to the
collection. These are the very volumes the country would like.

Every one when first exploring the world of books, and through them the
larger world of reality, is attracted by travels and voyages. These are
peculiarly interesting to country people, to whom the idea of exploration
is natural. Reading such a book is like coming to a hill and seeing a
fresh landscape spread out before them. There are no museums in the
villages to familiarise them with the details of life in distant parts of
the earth, so that every page as it is turned over brings something new.
They understand the hardships of existence, hard food, exposure, the
struggle with the storm, and can enter into the anxieties and privations
of the earlier voyagers searching out the coast of America. They would
rather read these than the most exciting novels. If they could get
geography, without degrees of longitude, geography, or rather
ethnography, which deals with the ways of the inhabitants, they would be
delighted. All such facts being previously unknown come with the novelty
of fiction. Sport, where it battles with the tigers of India, the lions
of Africa, or the buffalo in America--with large game--is sure to be read
with interest. There does not appear to be much demand for history, other
than descriptions of great battles, not for history in the modern sense.
A good account of a battle, of the actual fighting without the political
movements that led to it, is eagerly read. Almost perhaps more than all
these the wonders of science draw country readers. If a little book
containing an intelligible and non-technical description of the electric
railway were offered in the villages, it would be certain to sell. But it
must not be educational in tone, because they dislike to feel that they
are being taught, and they are repelled by books which profess to show
the reader how to do this or that. Technical books are unsuitable; and as
for the goody-goody, it is out of the question. Most of the reading-rooms
started in villages by well-meaning persons have failed from the
introduction of goody-goody.

These are the principal subjects which the villager would select or avoid
had he the opportunity to make a choice. As it is, he has to take what
chance brings him, and often to be content with nothing, because he does
not know what to ask for. If any one ever takes up the task of supplying
the country with the sound and thoroughly first-class literature for
which it is now ready, he will at least have the certain knowledge that
he is engaged in a most worthy propaganda--with the likelihood of a large
pecuniary reward. Such profits must of necessity be slow in the
beginning, as they are in all new businesses, but they would also be slow
in working off. It is a peculiarity of the country to be loyal. If
country people believe in a bank, for instance--and they always believe
in the first bank that comes among them--they continue to believe, and no
effort whatever is necessary to keep the connection. It will be
generations in dying out. So with a newspaper, so with an auctioneer--with
everything. That which comes first is looked on with suspicion and
distrust for a time, people are chary of having anything to do with it;
but by-and-by they deal, and, having once dealt, always deal. They remain
loyal; competition is of no use, the old name is the one believed in.
Whoever acquires a name for the supply of the literature the country
wants will retain that name for three-quarters of a century, and with a
minimum of labour. At the same time the extent of country is so large
that there is certainly room for several without clashing.


In working out a scheme for such a supply, it may be taken for granted
that books intended for the villages must be cheap. When we consider the
low prices at which reprinted books, the copyrights of which have
expired, are now often met with, there really seems no difficulty in
this. Sixpence, a shilling, eighteenpence; nothing must be more than two
shillings, and a shilling should be the general maximum. For a shilling
how many clever little books are on sale on London bookstalls! If so, why
should not other books adapted to the villager's wishes be on sale at a
similar price in the country? Something might, perhaps, be learned in
this direction from the American practice. Books in America are often
sold for a few cents; good-sized books too. Thousands of books are sold
in France at a franc--twopence less than the maximum of a shilling. The
paper is poor, the printing nothing to boast of, the binding merely
paper, but the text is there. All the villager wants is the text.
Binding, the face of the printing, the quality of the paper--to these
outside accidents he is perfectly indifferent. If the text only is the
object, a book can be produced cheaply. On first thoughts, it appeared
that much might be effected in the way of reprinting extracts from the
best authors, little handbooks which could be sold at a few pence.
Something, indeed, might be done in this way. But upon the whole I think
that as a general rule extracts are a mistake. There is nothing so
unsatisfactory as an extract. You cannot supply the preceding part nor
the following with success. The extract itself loses its force and
brilliance because the mind has not been prepared to perceive it by the
gradual approach the author designed. It is like a face cut out of a
large picture. The face may be pretty, but the meaning is lost. Such
fragments of Shakspeare, for instance, as one sometimes still meets with
reprinted in this way strike the mind like a fragment of rock hurled at
one's head. They stun with rugged grandeur. As a rule, extracts, then,
are a mistake--not as a rigid rule, but as a general principle. It would
be better for the village reader to have a few books complete as to text,
no matter how poorly printed, or how coarsely got up, than numerous
partial reprints which lead the thoughts nowhere.

There must be no censorship, nothing kept back. The weakness and
narrowness of mind which still exists--curious relic of the past--among
some otherwise worthy classes who persist in thinking no one must read
what they dislike, must not be permitted to domineer the village
bookstall. There must be absolute freedom, or the villager will turn
away. His mind, though open to receive, is robust like his body, and will
not accept shackles. The propaganda should be of the best productions of
the highest intellects, independent of creed and party. A practical
difficulty arises from the copyrights; you cannot reprint a book of which
the copyright still exists without injury to the original publisher and
the author. But there are many hundred books of the very best order of
which the copyright has expired, and which can be reprinted without
injury to any one. Then there are the books which it may be presumed
would be compiled on purpose for the object in view when once the scheme
was in working order. Thirdly, it is probable that many living authors
when about publishing a volume would not object to an arrangement for a
production in cheap form after a reasonable time. So that there is no
such difficulty here but that it might be overcome.




IV

PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION



When you have got your village library ready, how is it to be sold? How
is it to be distributed and placed in the hands of the people? How are
these people to be got at? They are scattered far apart, and not within
sound of trumpet. Travellers, indeed, could be sent round, but travellers
cost money. There is the horse and the man to attend to it, turnpikes,
repairs, hotels--all the various expenses so well known in business. Each
traveller could only call on a certain number of cottages and country
houses per day, comparatively a small number, for they are often at long
distances from each other; possibly he might find the garden gate locked
and the people in the field. At the best after a long day's work he would
only have sold a few dozen cheap books, and his inn bill would cover the
profit upon them. Reduced thus to the rigid test of figures, the chance
of success vanishes. But so, too, does the chance of success in any
enterprise if looked at in this fashion. It must be borne in mind that
the few copies of a cheap book sold in a day by a single traveller would
not represent the ultimate possible return. The traveller prepares the
ground which may yield a hundredfold afterwards. He awakens the demand
and shows how it can be supplied. He teaches the villager what he wants,
and how to get it. He lays the foundation of business in the future. The
few pence he actually receives are the forerunners of pounds. Nothing can
be accomplished without preliminary outlay. But conceding that the
regulation traveller is a costly instrument, and putting that method upon
one side for the present, there are other means available. There is the
post.

The post is a far more powerful disseminator in the country than in town.
A townsman picks up twenty letters, snatches the envelopes open, and
casts them aside. The letters delivered in the country have marvellously
multiplied, but still country people do not treat letters offhand. The
arrival of a letter or two is still an event; it is read twice or three
times, put in the pocket, and looked at again. Suburban residents receive
circulars by every other post of every kind and description, and cast
them contemptuously aside. In the country the delivery of a circular is
not so treated. It is certain to be read. Nothing may come of it, but it
is certain to be looked over, and more than once. It will be left on the
table, or be folded up and put on the mantelpiece: it will not be
destroyed. Country people have not yet got into the habit which may be
called slur-reading. They really read. The circulars at present delivered
in the country are counted by ones and twos where suburban residents get
scores and fifties. Almost the only firms who have found out the value of
circulars in the country are the great drapery establishments, and their
enterprise is richly rewarded. The volume of business thus transacted and
brought to the London house by the circular is enormous. There are very
few farmhouses in the country which do not contribute orders once or
twice a year. Very many families get all their materials in this way, far
cheaper, better, and more novel than those on sale in the country towns.
Here, then, is a powerful lever ready to the hand of the publisher. Every
circular sent to a country house will be read--not slurred--and will
ultimately yield a return. Cottagers never receive a circular at all. If
a circular came to a cottage by post it would be read and re-read, folded
up neatly, and preserved. After a time--for an advertisement is exactly
like seed sown in the ground--something would be done. Some incident
would happen, and it would be remembered that there was something about
it in the circular--some book that dealt with the subject. There is
business directly. The same post that brought the original circular,
distributing knowledge of books, can bring the book itself. Those who
understand the importance attached by country people, and especially by
cottagers, to anything that comes by post, will see the use of the
circular, which must be regarded as the most effective means of reaching
the rural population.

Next in value to the circular is the poster. The extent to which posters
are used in London, which contains a highly educated population, is proof
sufficient of its utility as a disseminator. But in the country the
poster has never yet been resorted to as an aid to the bookseller. The
auctioneers have found out its importance, and their bills are freely
dispersed in every nook and corner. There are no keener men, and they
know from experience that it is the cheapest way of advertising sales.
Their posters are everywhere--on walls, gate-posts, sign-posts, barns, in
the bars of wayside inns. The local drapers in the market towns resort to
the poster when they have a sale at "vastly reduced" prices, sending
round the bill-sticker to remote hamlets and mere settlements of two or
three houses. They, too, know its value, and that by it customers are
attracted from the most outlying places. People in villages and hamlets
pass the greater part of their time out-of-doors and are in no hurry, so
that if in walking down the road to or from their work they see a bill
stuck upon a wall, they invariably stop to read it. People on the London
railway platforms rather blink the posters displayed around them: they
would rather avoid them, though they cannot altogether. It is just the
reverse in the hamlet, where the inhabitants lead such monotonous lives,
and have so little excitement that a fresh poster is a good subject for
conversation. No matter where you put a poster, somebody will read it,
and it is only next in value to the circular, appealing to the public as
the circular appeals to the individual. Here are two methods of reaching
the country and of disseminating a knowledge of books other than the
employment of expensive travellers. Even if travellers be called in,
circular and poster should precede their efforts.

There is then the advertisement column of the local press. The local
press has never been used for the advertisement of such books as are
suitable to country readers, certainly not for the class hitherto chiefly
borne in view and for convenience designated villager. The reason why
such books have not been advertised in the local press is probably
because the authors and publishers had no idea of the market that exists
in the country. For the most part readers in town and the suburbs only
glance at the exciting portions of papers, and then cast them aside.
Readers in the villages read every line from the first column to the
last, from the title to the printer's address. The local papers are
ploughed steadily through, just as the horses plough the fields, and
every furrow conscientiously followed from end to end, advertisements and
all. The brewer's, the grocer's, the draper's, the ironmonger's
advertisements (market-town tradesmen), which have been there month after
month, are all read, and the slightest change immediately noted. If there
were any advertisement of books suitable to their taste it would be read
in exactly the same manner. But in advertising for country people one
fact must be steadily borne in mind--that they are slow to act; that is,
the advertisement must be permanent. A few insertions are forgotten
before those who have seen them have made up their minds to purchase.
When an advertisement is always there, by-and-by the thought suggested
acts on the will, and the stray coin is invested--it may be six months
after the first inclination arose. The procrastination of country people
is inexplicable to hurrying London men. But it is quite useless to
advertise unless it is taken into account. If permanent, an advertisement
in the local press will reach its mark. It is this permanency which gives
another value to the circular and the poster; the circular is folded up
and preserved to be looked at again like a book of reference; the poster
remains on the dry wall of the barn, and the ink is legible months after
it was first put up.

Having now informed the hamlets of the books which are in existence, if
complete success is desired, the next step should be to put specimens of
those books before the eyes of the residents. To read of them, to know
that they exist, and then to actually see them--as Londoners see them in
every street--is a logical process leading to purchases. As already
pointed out, there are little shops in every village and hamlet where the
local paper can be obtained which would gladly expose books for sale if
the offer were made to them. The same remark applies to the shops in the
market towns. These, too, require to be supplied; they require the thing
explained to them, and they would at once try it. Finally, let a
traveller once now and then come along, and call at these shops to wake
up and stir the business and change the face of the counter. Let him
while in the hamlet also call at as many houses and cottages as he can
manage in a few hours, leaving circulars--always circulars--behind him.
There would then be a complete system of supply.


SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE
[Footnote: The sunlight and the winds enter London, and the life of the
fields is there too, if you will but see it.]

There are days now and again when the summer broods in Trafalgar Square;
the flood of light from a cloudless sky gathers and grows, thickening the
air; the houses enclose the beams as water is enclosed in a cup. Sideways
from the white-painted walls light is reflected; upwards from the broad,
heated pavement in the centre light and heat ascend; from the blue heaven
it presses downwards. Not only from the sun--one point--but from the
entire width of the visible blue the brilliant stream flows. Summer is
enclosed between the banks of houses--all summer's glow and glory of
exceeding brightness. The blue panel overhead has but a stray fleck of
cloud, a Cupid drawn on the panel in pure white, but made indefinite by
distance. The joyous swallows climb high into the illuminated air till
the eye, daunted by the glow, can scarce detect their white breasts as
they turn.

Slant shadows from the western side give but a margin of contrast; the
rays are reflected through them, and they are only shadows of shadows. At
the edges their faint sloping lines are seen in the air, where a million
motes impart a fleeting solidity to the atmosphere. A pink-painted front,
the golden eagle of the great West, golden lettering, every chance strip
and speck of colour is washed in the dazzling light, made clear and
evident. The hands and numerals of the clock yonder are distinct and
legible, the white dial-plate polished; a window suddenly opened throws a
flash across the square. Eastwards the air in front of the white walls
quivers, heat and light reverberating visibly, and the dry flowers on the
window-sills burn red and yellow in the glare. Southwards green trees,
far down the street, stand, as it seems, almost at the foot of the
chiselled tower of Parliament--chiselled in straight lines and
perpendicular grooves, each of which casts a shadow into itself. Again,
the corners advanced before the main wall throw shadows on it, and the
hollow casements draw shadows into their cavities. Thus, in the bright
light against the blue sky the tower pencils itself with a dark crayon,
and is built, not of stone, but of light and shadow. Flowing lines of
water rise and fall from the fountains in the square, drooping like the
boughs of a weeping ash, drifted a little to one side by an imperceptible
air, and there sprinkling the warm pavement in a sparkling shower. The
shower of finely divided spray now advances and now retreats, as the
column of water bends to the current of air, or returns to its upright
position.

By a pillared gateway there is a group in scarlet, and from time to time
other groups in scarlet pass and repass within the barrack-court. A
cream-tinted dress, a pink parasol--summer hues--go by in the stream of
dark-clothed people; a flower fallen on the black water of a river.
Either the light subdues the sound, or perhaps rather it renders the
senses slumberous and less sensitive, but the great sunlit square is
silent--silent, that is, for the largest city on earth. A slumberous
silence of abundant light, of the full summer day, of the high flood of
summer hours whose tide can rise no higher. A time to linger and dream
under the beautiful breast of heaven, heaven brooding and descending in
pure light upon man's handiwork. If the light shall thus come in, and of
its mere loveliness overcome every aspect of dreariness, why shall not
the light of thought, and hope--the light of the soul--overcome and sweep
away the dust of our lives?

I stood under the portico of the National Gallery in the shade looking
southwards, across the fountains and the lions, towards the green trees
under the distant tower. Once a swallow sang in passing on the wing,
garrulous still as in the time of old Rome and Augustan Virgil. From the
high pediments dropped the occasional chatter of sparrows and the chirp
of their young in the roofs. The second brood, they were late; they would
not be in time for the harvest and the fields of stubble. A flight of
blue pigeons rose from the central pavement to the level line of the
parapet of the western houses. A starling shot across the square, swift,
straight, resolute. I looked for the swifts, but they had gone, earliest
of all to leave our sky for distant countries. Away in the harvest field
the reaper, pausing in his work, had glanced up at the one stray fleck of
cloud in the sky, which to my fancy might be a Cupid on a blue panel, and
seeing it smiled in the midst of the corn, wiping his blackened face, for
he knew it meant dry weather. Heat, and the dust of the straw, the
violent labour had darkened his face from brown almost to blackness--a
more than swarthiness, a blackness. The stray cloud was spreading out in
filaments, each thread drawn to a fineness that ended presently in
disappearance. It was a sign to him of continued sunshine and the
prosperity of increased wages. The sun from whose fiery brilliance I
escaped into the shadow was to him a welcome friend; his neck was bare to
the fierceness of the sun. His heart was gladdened because the sky
promised him permission to labour till the sinews of his fingers
stiffened in their crooked shape (as they held the reaping-hook), and he
could hardly open them to grasp the loaf he had gained.

So men laboured of old time, whether with plough or sickle or
pruning-hook, in the days when Augustan Virgil heard the garrulous
swallow, still garrulous. An endless succession of labour, under the
brightness of summer, under the gloom of winter; to my thought it is a
sadness even in the colour and light and glow of this hour of sun, this
ceaseless labour, repeating the furrow, reiterating the blow, the same
furrow, the same stroke--shall we never know how to lighten it, how to
live with the flowers, the swallows, the sweet delicious shade, and the
murmur of the stream? Not the blackened reaper only, but the crowd whose
low hum renders the fountain inaudible, the nameless and unknown crowd of
this immense city wreathed round about the central square. I hope that at
some time, by dint of bolder thought and freer action, the world shall
see a race able to enjoy it without stint, a race able to enjoy the
flowers with which the physical world is strewn, the colours of the
garden of life. To look backwards with the swallow there is sadness,
to-day with the fleck of cloud there is unrest; but forward, with the
broad sunlight, there is hope.

Except you see these colours, and light, and tones, except you see the
blue heaven over the parapet, you know not, you cannot feel, how great
are the possibilities of man. At my back, within the gallery, there is
many a canvas painted under Italian skies, in glowing Spain, in bright
Southern France. There are scenes lit with the light that gleams on
orange grove and myrtle; these are faces tinted with the golden hue that
floats in southern air. But yet, if any one impartial will stand here
outside, under the portico, and forgetting that it is prosaic London,
will look at the summer enclosed within the square, and acknowledge it
for itself as it is, he must admit that the view--light and colour, tone
and shade--is equal to the painted canvas, is full, as it were, to the
brim of interest, suggestion, and delight. Before the painted canvas you
stand with prepared mind; you have come to see Italy, you are educated to
find colour, and the poetry of tone. Therefore you see it, if it is
there. Here in the portico you are unprepared, uneducated; no one has
ever given a thought of it. But now trace out the colour and the
brightness; gaze up into the sky, watch the swallows, note the sparkle of
the fountain, observe the distant tower chiselled with the light and
shade. Think, then, of the people, not as mere buyers and sellers, as
mere counters, but as human beings--beings possessed of hearts and minds,
full of the passions and the hopes and fears which made the ancient poets
great merely to record. These are the same passions that were felt in
antique Rome, whose very name is a section of human life. There is colour
in these lives now as then.




VENICE IN THE EAST END



The great red bowsprit of an Australian clipper projects aslant the quay.
Stem to the shore, the vessel thrusts an outstretched arm high over the
land, as an oak in a glade pushes a bare branch athwart the opening. This
beam is larger than an entire tree divested of its foliage, such trees,
that is, as are seen in English woods. The great oaks might be bigger at
the base where they swell and rest themselves on a secure pedestal. Five
hundred years old an oak might measure more at six feet, at eight, or ten
feet from the ground; after five hundred years, that is, of steady
growth. But if even such a monarch were taken, and by some enormous
mechanic power drawn out, and its substance elongated into a tapering
spar, it would not be massive enough to form this single beam. Where it
starts from the stem of the vessel it is already placed as high above the
level of the quay as it is from the sward to the first branch of an oak.
At its root it starts high overhead, high enough for a trapeze to be
slung to it upon which grown persons could practise athletic exercises.
From its roots, from the forward end of the deck, the red beam rises at a
regular angle, diminishing in size with altitude till its end in
comparison with the commencement may be called pointed, though in reality
blunt. To the pointed end it would be a long climb; it would need a
ladder. The dull red of the vast beam is obscured by the neutral tint of
the ropes which are attached to it; colour generally gives a sense of
lightness by defining shape, but this red is worn and weatherbeaten,
rubbed and battered, so that its uncertain surface adds to the weight of
the boom.

It hangs, an immense arm thrust across the sky; it is so high it is
scarcely noticed in walking under it; it is so great and ponderous, and
ultra in size, that the eye and mind alike fail to estimate it. For it is
a common effect of great things to be overlooked. A moderately large
rock, a moderately large house, is understood and mentally put down, as
it were, at a certain figure, but the immense--which is beyond the
human--cannot enter the organs of the senses. The portals of the senses
are not wide enough to receive it; you must turn your back on it and
reflect, and add a little piece of it to another little piece, and so
build up your understanding. Human things are small; you live in a large
house, but the space you actually occupy is very inconsiderable; the
earth itself, great as it is, is overlooked, it is too large to be seen.
The eye is accustomed to the little, and cannot in a moment receive the
immense. Only by slow comparison with the bulk of oak trees, by the
height of a trapeze, by the climbing of a ladder, can I convey to my mind
a true estimate and idea of this gigantic bowsprit. It would be quite
possible to walk by and never see it because of its size, as one walks by
bridges or travels over a viaduct without a thought.

The vessel lies with her bowsprit projecting over the quay, moored as a
boat run ashore on the quiet sandy beach of a lake, not as a ship is
generally placed with her broadside to the quay wall or to the pier. Her
stern is yonder--far out in the waters of the dock, too far to concern us
much as we look from the verge of the wall. Access to the ship is
obtained by a wooden staging running out at the side; instead of the ship
lying beside the pier, a pier has been built out to fit to the ship. This
plan, contrary to preconceived ideas, is evidently founded on good
reason, for if such a vessel were moored broadside to the quay how much
space would she take up? There would be, first, the hull itself say
eighty yards, and then the immense bowsprit. Two or three such ships
would, as it were, fill a whole field of water; they would fill a whole
dock; it would not require many to cover a mile. By placing each stem to
the quay they only occupy a space equal to their breadth instead of to
their length. This arrangement, again, tends to deceive the eye; you
might pass by, and, seeing only the bow, casually think there was nothing
particular in it. Everything here is on so grand a scale that the largest
component part is diminished; the quay, broad enough to build several
streets abreast; the square, open stretches of gloomy water; and beyond
these the wide river. The wind blows across these open spaces in a broad
way--not as it comes in sudden gusts around a street corner, but in a
broad open way, each puff a quarter of a mile wide. The view of the sky
is open overhead, masts do not obstruct the upward look; the sunshine
illumines or the cloud-shadows darken hundreds of acres at once. It is a
great plain; a plain of enclosed waters, built in and restrained by the
labour of man, and holding upon its surface fleet upon fleet, argosy upon
argosy. Masts to the right, masts to the left, masts in front, masts
yonder above the warehouses; masts in among the streets as steeples
appear amid roofs; masts across the river hung with drooping half-furled
sails; masts afar down thin and attenuated, mere dark straight lines in
the distance. They await in stillness the rising of the tide.

It comes, and at the exact moment--foreknown to a second--the gates are
opened, and the world of ships moves outwards to the stream. Downwards
they drift to the east, some slowly that have as yet but barely felt the
pull of the hawser, others swiftly, and the swifter because their masts
cross and pass the masts of inward-bound ships ascending. Two lines of
masts, one raking one way, the other the other, cross and puzzle the eye
to separate their weaving motion and to assign the rigging to the right
vessel. White funnels aslant, dark funnels, red funnels rush between
them; white steam curls upwards; there is a hum, a haste, almost a whirl,
for the commerce of the world is crowded into the hour of the full tide.
These great hulls, these crossing masts a-rake, the intertangled rigging,
the background of black barges drifting downwards, the lines and ripple
of the water as the sun comes out, if you look too steadily, daze the
eyes and cause a sense of giddiness. It is so difficult to realise so
much mass--so much bulk--moving so swiftly, and in so intertangled a
manner; a mighty dance of thousands of tons--gliding, slipping, drifting
onwards, yet without apparent effort. Thousands upon thousands of tons go
by like shadows, silently, as if the ponderous hulls had no stability or
weight; like a dream they float past, solid and yet without reality. It
is a giddiness to watch them.

This happens, not on one day only, not one tide, but at every tide and
every day the year through, year after year. The bright summer sun glows
upon it; the red sun of the frosty hours of winter looks at it from under
the deepening canopy of vapour the blasts of the autumnal equinox howl
over the vast city and whistle shrilly in the rigging; still at every
tide the world of ships moves out into the river. Why does not a painter
come here and place the real romance of these things upon canvas, as
Venice has been placed? Never twice alike, the changing atmosphere is
reflected in the hue of the varnished masts, now gleaming, now dull, now
dark. Till it has been painted, and sung by poet, and described by
writers, nothing is human. Venice has been made human by poet, painter,
and dramatist, yet what was Venice to this--this the Fact of our own day?
Two of the caravels of the Doge's fleet, two of Othello's strongest
war-ships, could scarcely carry the mast of my Australian clipper. At a
guess it is four feet through; it is of iron, tubular; there is room for
a winding spiral staircase within it; as for its height, I will not risk
a guess at it. Could Othello's war-ships carry it they would consider it
a feat, as the bringing of the Egyptian obelisk to London was thought a
feat. The petty ripples of the Adriatic, what were they? This red
bowsprit at its roots is high enough to suspend a trapeze; at its head a
ladder would be required to mount it from the quay; yet by-and-by, when
the tide at last comes, and its time arrives to move outwards in the
dance of a million tons, this mighty bowsprit, meeting the Atlantic
rollers in the Bay of Biscay, will dip and bury itself in foam under the
stress of the vast sails aloft. The forty-feet billows of the Pacific
will swing these three or four thousand or more tons, this giant hull
which must be moored even stem to shore, up and down and side to side as
a handful in the grasp of the sea. Now, each night as the clouds part,
the north star looks down upon the deck; then, the Southern Cross will be
visible in the sky, words quickly written, but half a globe apart. What
was there in Venice to arouse thoughts such as spring from the sight of
this red bowsprit? In two voyages my Australian clipper shall carry as
much merchandise as shall equal the entire commerce of Venice for a year.

Yet it is not the volume, not the bulk only; cannot you see the white
sails swelling, and the proud vessel rising to the Pacific billows, the
north star sinking, and the advent of the Southern Cross; the thousand
miles of ocean without land around, the voyage through space made visible
as sea, the far, far south, the transit around a world? If Italian
painters had had such things as these to paint, if poets of old time had
had such things as these to sing, do you imagine they would have been
contented with crank caravels and tales thrice told already? They had
eyes to see that which was around them. Open your eyes and see those
things which are around us at this hour.




THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

The front of the British Museum stands in the sunlight clearly marked
against the firm blue of the northern sky. The blue appears firm as if
solid above the angle of the stonework, for while looking towards
it--towards the north--the rays do not come through the azure, which is
therefore colour without life. It seems nearer than the southern sky, it
descends and forms a close background to the building; as you approach
you seem to come nearer to the blue surface rising at its rear. The dark
edges of sloping stone are distinct and separate, but not sharp; the hue
of the stone is toned by time and weather, and is so indefinite as to
have lost its hardness. Those small rounded bodies upon the cornice are
pigeons resting in the sun, so motionless and neutral-tinted that they
might be mistaken for some portion of the carving. A double gilt ring, a
circle in a circle, at the feet of an allegorical figure gleams brightly
against the dark surface. The sky already seems farther away seen between
the boles of stone, perpetual shade dwells in their depth, but two or
three of the pigeons fluttering down are searching for food on the sunlit
gravel at the bottom of the steps. To them the building is merely a rock,
pierced with convenient caverns; they use its exterior for their purpose,
but penetrate no farther. With air and light, the sunlit gravel, the
green lawn between it and the outer railings--with these they are
concerned, and with these only. The heavy roll of the traffic in Oxford
Street, audible here, is nothing to them; the struggle for money does not
touch them, they let it go by. Nor the many minds searching and
re-searching in the great Library, this mental toil is no more to them
than the lading of the waggons in the street. Neither the tangible
product nor the intellectual attainment is of any value--only the air and
light. There are idols in the galleries within upon whose sculptured
features the hot Eastern sun shone thousands of years since. They were
made by human effort, however mistaken, and they were the outcome of
human thought and handiwork. The doves fluttered about the temples in
those days, full only of the air and light. They fluttered about the
better temples of Greece and round the porticos where philosophy was
born. Still only the light, the sunlight, the air of heaven. We labour on
and think, and carve our idols and the pen never ceases from its labour;
but the lapse of the centuries has left us in the same place. The doves
who have not laboured nor travailed in thought possess the sunlight. Is
not theirs the preferable portion?

The shade deepens as I turn from the portico to the hall and vast domed
house of books. The half-hearted light under the dome is stagnant and
dead. For it is the nature of light to beat and throb; it has a pulse and
undulation like the swing of the sea. Under the trees in the woodlands it
vibrates and lives; on the hills there is a resonance of light. It beats
against every leaf, and, thrown back, beats again; it is agitated with
the motion of the grass blades; you can feel it ceaselessly streaming on
your face. It is renewed and fresh every moment, and never twice do you
see the same ray. Stayed and checked by the dome and book-built walls,
the beams lose their elasticity, and the ripple ceases in the motionless
pool. The eyes, responding, forget to turn quickly, and only partially
see. Deeper thought and inspiration quit the heart, for they can only
exist where the light vibrates and communicates its tone to the soul. If
any imagine they shall find thought in many books, certainly they will be
disappointed. Thought dwells by the stream and sea, by the hill and in
the woodland, in the sunlight and free wind, where the wild dove haunts.
Walls and roof shut it off as they shut off the undulation of light. The
very lightning cannot penetrate here. A murkiness marks the coming of the
cloud, and the dome becomes vague, but the fierce flash is shorn to a
pale reflection, and the thunder is no more than the rolling of a heavier
truck loaded with tomes. But in closing out the sky, with it is cut off
all that the sky can tell you with its light, or in its passion of storm.

Sitting at these long desks and trying to read, I soon find that I have
made a mistake; it is not here I shall find that which I seek. Yet the
magic of books draws me here time after time, to be as often
disappointed. Something in a book tempts the mind as pictures tempt the
eye; the eye grows weary of pictures, but looks again. The mind wearies
of books, yet cannot forget that once when they were first opened in
youth they gave it hope of knowledge. Those first books exhausted, there
is nothing left but words and covers. It seems as if all the books in the
world--really books--can be bought for L10. Man's whole thought is
purchaseable at that small price, for the value of a watch, of a good
dog. For the rest it is repetition and paraphrase. The grains of wheat
were threshed out and garnered two thousand years since. Except the
receipts of chemists, except specifications for the steam-engine, or the
electric motor, there is nothing in these millions of books that was not
known at the commencement of our era. Not a thought has been added.
Continual threshing has widened out the heap of straw and spread it
abroad, but it is empty. Nothing will ever be found in it. Those original
grains of true thought were found beside the stream, the sea, in the
sunlight, at the shady verge of woods. Let us leave this beating and
turning over of empty straw; let us return to the stream and the hills;
let us ponder by night in view of the stars.

It is pleasant to go out again into the portico under the great columns.
On the threshold I feel nearer knowledge than when within. The sun
shines, and southwards above the houses there is a statue crowning the
summit of some building. The figure is in the midst of the light; it
stands out clear and white as if in Italy. The southern blue is
luminous--the beams of light flow through it--the air is full of the
undulation and life of light. There is rest in gazing at the sky: a sense
that wisdom does exist and may be found, a hope returns that was taken
away among the books. The green lawn is pleasant to look at, though it is
mown so ruthlessly. If they would only let the grass spring up, there
would be a thought somewhere entangled in the long blades as a dewdrop
sparkles in their depths. Seats should be placed here, under the great
columns or by the grass, so that one might enjoy the sunshine after books
and watch the pigeons. They have no fear of the people, they come to my
feet, but the noise of a door heavily swinging-to in the great building
alarms them; they rise and float round, and return again. The sunlight
casts a shadow of the pigeon's head and neck upon his shoulder; he turns
his head, and the shadow of his beak falls on his breast. Iridescent
gleams of bronze and green and blue play about his neck; blue
predominates. His pink feet step so near, the red round his eye is
visible. As he rises vertically, forcing his way in a straight line
upwards, his wings almost meet above his back and again beneath the body;
they are put forth to his full stroke. When his flight inclines and
becomes gradually horizontal, the effort is less and the wing tips do not
approach so closely.

They have not laboured in mental searching as we have; they have not
wasted their time looking among empty straw for the grain that is not
there. They have been in the sunlight. Since the days of ancient Greece
the doves have remained in the sunshine; we who have laboured have found
nothing. In the sunshine, by the shady verge of woods, by the sweet
waters where the wild dove sips, there alone will thought be found.





THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE

The fixed perspective of Paris neither elongates nor contracts with any
change of atmosphere, so that the apparent distance from one point to
another remains always the same. Reduced to the simplest elements the
street architecture of Paris consists of two parallel lines, which to the
eye appear to gradually converge. In sunshine and shade the sides of the
street approach in an unvarying ratio; a cloud goes over, and the lines
do not soften; brilliant light succeeds, and is merely light--no effect
accompanies it. The architecture conquers, and is always architecture; it
resists the sun, the air, the rain, being without expression. The
geometry of the street can never be forgotten. Moving along it you have
merely advanced so far along a perspective, between the two lines which
tutors rule to teach drawing. By-and-by, when you reach the other end and
look back, the perspective is accurately reversed. This is now the large
end of the street, and that which has been left the small. The houses
seen from this end present precisely the same facade as they did at
starting, so that were it not for the sense of weariness from walking it
would be easy to imagine that no movement had taken place. Each house is
exactly the same height as the next, the windows are of the same pattern,
the wooden outer blinds the same shape; the line of the level roof runs
along straight and unbroken, the chimneys are either invisible or
insignificant. Nothing projects, no bow window, balcony, or gable; the
surface is as flat as well can be. From parapet to pavement the wall
descends plumb, and the glance slips along it unchecked. Each house is
exactly the same colour as the next, white; the wooden outer blinds are
all the same colour, a dull grey; in the windows there are no visible
red, or green, or tapestry curtains, mere sashes. There are no flowers in
the windows to catch the sunlight. The upper storeys have the air of
being uninhabited, as the windows have no curtains whatever, and the
wooden blinds are frequently closed. Two flat vertical surfaces, one on
each side of the street, each white. and grey, extend onwards and
approach in mathematical ratio. That is a Parisian street. Go on now to
the next street, and you find precisely the same conditions repeated--the
streets that cross are similar, those that radiate the same. Some are
short, others long, some wide, some narrow; they are all geometry and
white paint. The vast avenues, a rifle-shot across, such as the Avenue de
l'Opera, differ only in width and in the height of the houses. The
monotony of these gigantic houses is too great to be expressed. Then
across the end of the avenue they throw some immense facade--some public
building, an opera-house, a palace, a ministry, anything will do--in
order that you shall see nothing but Paris. Weary of the gigantic
monotony of the gigantic houses, exactly alike, your eye shall not catch
a glimpse of some distant cloud rising like a snowy mountain (as Japanese
artists show the top of Fusiyama); you shall not see the breadth of the
sky, nor even any steeple, tower, dome, or gable; you shall see nothing
but Paris; the avenue is wide enough for the Grand Army to march down,
but the exit to the eye is blocked by this immense meaningless facade
drawn across it. No doubt it is executed in the "highest style"; in
effect it appears a repetition of windows, columns, and doorways exactly
alike, all quite meaningless, for the columns support nothing, like the
fronts sold in boxes of children's toy bricks. Perhaps on the roof there
is some gilding, and you ask yourself the question why it is there. These
facades, of which there are so many, vary in detail; in effect they are
all the same, an utter weariness to the eye. Every fresh day's research
into the city brings increasing disappointment, a sense of the childish,
of feebleness, and weakness exhibited in public, as if they had built in
sugar for the top of a cake. The level ground will not permit of any
advantage of view; there are none of those sudden views so common and so
striking in English towns. Everything is planed, smoothed, and set to an
oppressive regularity.

Turning round a corner one comes suddenly on a pillar of a dingy, dull
hue, whose outline bulges unpleasantly. In London you would shrug your
shoulders, mutter "hideous!" and pass on. This is the famous Vendome
Column. As for the Column of July, it is so insignificant, so silly (no
other word expresses it so well), that a second glance is carefully
avoided. The Hotel de Ville, a vast white building, is past description,
it is so plain and so repellent in its naked glaring assertion. From
about old Notre Dame they have removed every medieval outwork which had
grown up around and rendered it lifelike; it now rises perpendicular and
abrupt from the white surface of the square. Unless you had been told
that it was the Notre Dame of Victor Hugo you would not look at its
exterior twice. The interior is another matter. In external form Notre
Dame cannot enter into competition with Canterbury. The barrack-like
Hotel des Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon--was ever a tomb so miserably
lacking in all that should inspire a reverential feeling?

The marble tub in which the urn is sunk, the gilded chapel, and the
yellow windows--could anything be more artificial and less appropriate?
They jar on the senses, they insult the torn flags which were carried by
the veterans at Austerlitz, and which now droop, never again to be
unfurled to the wind of battle. The tiny Seine might as well flow in a
tunnel, being bridged so much. There remains but the Arc de Triomphe, the
only piece of architecture in all modern Paris worth a second look. Even
this is spoiled by the same intolerable artificiality. The ridiculous
sculpture on the face, the figures blowing trumpets, and, above all, the
group on the summit, which the tongue of man cannot describe, so utterly
hideous is it, destroy the noble lines of the arch, if any one is so
imprudent as to approach near it. Receding down the Avenue
Friedland--somewhat aslant--the chestnut trees presently conceal the side
sculpture; and then by tilting one's hat so that the brim shall hide the
group on the summit, it is possible to admire the proportions of the Arc.
In the Tuileries gardens there is a spot where distance obliterates the
sculpture, and the projecting bough of an elm conceals the group on the
top. Here the arch appears noble; but it is no longer French; it is now
merely a copy of a Roman original, which any of our own architects could
erect for us in Hyde Park. For the most part the vaunted Boulevards are
but planted with planes, the least pleasing of trees, whose leaves
present an unvarying green, till they drop a dead brown; and the
horse-chestnuts in the Champs Elysees are set in straight lines to repeat
the geometry of the streets.

Thus central Paris has no character. It is without individuality and
expressionless. Suppose you said, "The human face is really very
irregular; it requires shaping. This nose projects; here, let us flatten
it to the level of the cheek. This mouth curves at the corners; let us
cut it straight. These eyebrows arch; make them straight. This colour is
too flesh-like; bring white paint. Besides, the features move, they
laugh, they assume sadness; this is wrong. Here, divide the muscles, that
they may hence. forth remain in unvarying rigidity." That is what has
been done to Paris. It is made straight; it is idealised after Euclid; it
is stiff, wearisome, and feeble. Lastly, it has no expression. The
distances as observed at the commencement remain always the same, partly
because of the obtrusive geometry and the monotony, partly because of the
whiteness, and partly because of the peculiarity of the atmosphere, for
which of course the Parisian is not responsible, but should have
remembered in building. Advantage might surely have been taken of so
clear an air in some manner. The colour and tone, the light and shade,
the change and variety of London are entirely wanting; in short, Paris is
the plainest city in Europe.




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