12 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



butterflies are with them. So the woods are silent, 

 still, and deserted, save by a stray rabbit among the 

 thistles, and the grasshoppers ceaselessly leaping in 

 the grass. 



Keturning presently to the gateway just outside the 

 wood, where upon first coming the pheasants and 

 partridges were dusting themselves, a waggon is now 

 passing among the corn and is being laden with the 

 sheaves. But afar off, across the broad field and 

 under the wood, it seems somehow only a part of the 

 silence and the solitude. The men with it move 

 about the stubble, calmly toiling ; the horses, having 

 drawn it a little way, become motionless, reposing as 

 they stand, every line of their large limbs expressing 

 delight in physical ease and idleness. 



Perhaps the heat has made the men silent, for 

 scarcely a word is spoken; if it were, in the still- 

 ness it must be heard, though they are at some 

 distance. The wheels, well greased for the heavy 

 harvest w r ork, do not creak. Save an occasional 

 monosyllable, as the horses are ordered on, or to 

 stop, and a faint rustling of straw, there is no sound. 

 It may be the flood of brilliant light, or the mirage of 

 the heat, but in some way the waggon and its rising 

 load, the men and the horses, have an unreality of 

 appearance. 



The yellow wheat and stubble, the dull yellow of 

 the waggon, toned down by years of weather, the 

 green woods near at hand, darkening in the distance 

 and slowly changing to blue, the cloudless sky, the 

 heat-suffused atmosphere, in which things seem to 

 float rather than to grow or stand, the shadowless 



