72 BIRDS AND MAN 



It was here at this central spot, while I stood one 

 day idly watching the birds disporting themselves 

 about the Abbey and listened to their clamour, that 

 certain words of Ruskin came into my mind, and I 

 began to think of them not merely with admiration, 

 as when I first read them long ago, but critically. 



Ruskin, one of our greatest prose writers, is 

 usually at his best in the transposition of pictures 

 into words, his descriptions of what he has seen, 

 in nature and art, being the most perfect examples 

 of " word painting " in the language. Here his 

 writing is that of one whose vision is not merely, 

 as in the majority of men, the most important and 

 intellectual of the senses, but so infinitely more 

 important than all the others, and developed and 

 trained to so extraordinary a degree, as to make 

 him appear like a person of a single sense. We 

 may say that this predominant sense has caused, 

 or fed upon, the decay of the others. This is to 

 me a defect in the author I most admire ; for 

 though he makes me see, and delight in seeing, that 

 which was previously hidden, and all things gain in 

 beauty and splendour, I yet miss something from 

 the picture, just as I should miss light and colour 

 from a description of nature, however beautifully 

 written, by a man whose sense of sight was nothing 



