WINTER IN WEST DOWNLAND 281 



Midhurst and Trotton. It was very silent; only two 

 sounds were audible, and I stood for some time listen- 

 ing to them. One was the sound of a boy singing. 

 He was a cow-boy ; I could see him out in the middle 

 of the heath, standing among the furze-bushes, where 

 his cows were grazing. He was perhaps a choir-boy 

 in one of the village churches ; at all events, he was 

 singing a hymn in a trained and very beautiful voice. 

 In that still, open air, at the distance I heard him 

 (two to three hundred yards), the voice seemed purer 

 and sweeter than any boy's voice I have ever heard in 

 any church or cathedral. No doubt it was the dis- 

 tance, the silence of nature, the wild, solitary scene, 

 and perhaps, too, the abundant moisture in the air, 

 that gave the voice its exceeding beauty; and the 

 effect was as if this sound, too, had been cleansed and 

 clarified by the rains, even as the sky had been washed 

 to that softest, lucid blue. I listened to the boy sing- 

 ing and singing, with a short interval after each verse, 

 and to the one other sound, which came to me from 

 an equal distance on the opposite side the singing of 

 a solitary missel-thrush. The clear, bell-like note of 

 the bird filled the intervals in the boy's singing; and 

 the bird, like the boy, had a clearer, purer voice on 

 that day ; and like the other, too, he sang verse after 

 verse, with short intervals between. The effect was 

 indescribably beautiful. At last I thought I would 

 go and make the boy's acquaintance. Many a little 

 fellow tending cows on a heath have I talked with, 



