By George E. Dartttell. 81 



Hours of Spring, Field Words and Ways, Cottage Ideas, and My Old 

 Village. It contains several papers in his best manner. Every line 

 of Hours of Spring, for instance, has the true ring about it, and were 

 we to be asked to select the finest passage in all Jefferies' writings, 

 its first few pages would at once occur to us. The July Grass is 

 also a fine piece of work. Its last paragraph may be compared with 

 Emerson's Each and All. In Nature in the Louvre he surprises us 

 with a new phase of his genius. Walls in the Wheatfields and 

 Summer in Somerset are both of great excellence, though there is a 

 touch of unexpected bitterness in the former which might well have 

 been spared. My Old Village is as rambling as the hamlet itself, 

 but for all that it has a wonderful charm, touched with sadness, and 

 the end is in his best style. People, he says, deny now that there 

 ever was such a village as he has been describing. Well, perhaps 

 they are right. The evidence all goes against him. No one else 

 seems to have seen anything worth seeing there, so that perhaps 

 after all he was mistaken, and no such place ever existed. Perhaps, 

 too, after death, he will find out that there never was any earth. 



When those words were dictated to his wife the end must have 

 been drawing very near. Six weeks before they were given to the 

 world, in the October number of Longman's, the great writer was 

 laid to rest, in the quiet spot which he had himself chosen. The 

 long martyrdom was over, the short day's work was done. We dare 

 not here speak of these last few years of pain and poverty and devoted 

 love. Some record of them will be found in Mr. Besant's pages, 

 but the half is not told there, nor should it ever be told, for such 

 things are too sad, too sacred, for speech. 



The seal of Death has been set on his work, and when all is said 

 and done his name will still stand high in the long roll of those 

 whom England holds in honour, and higher still among those whom 

 we are proud to claim as our Wiltshire Worthies. 



in. , 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



I. 



Reporting; Editing & Authorship; Practical Hints for 



VOL. XXVII. — NO. LXXIX. G 



