FOOTPATHS. 19 



jerk themselves a few yards, to recommence hovering. 

 A greenfinch rises with a yellow gleam and a sweet 

 note from the grass, and is off with something for his 

 brood, or a starling, solitary now, for his mate is in 

 the nest, startled from his questing, goes straight 

 away. 



Dark starlings, greenfinch, gilded fly, glistening 

 beetle, blue butterfly, humble bee with scarf about his 

 thick waist, add their moving dots of colour to the 

 surface. There is no design, no balance, nothing 

 like a pattern perfect on the right-hand side, and 

 exactly equal on the left-hand. Even trees which 

 have some semblance of balance in form are not 

 really so, and as you walk round them so their outline 

 changes. 



Now the path approaches a stile set deep in thorns 

 and brambles, and hardly to be gained for curved 

 hooks and prickles. But on the briars June roses 

 bloom, arches of flowers over nettles, burdock, and 

 rushes in the ditch beneath. Sweet roses buds yet 

 unrolled, white and conical; roses half open and 

 pink tinted; roses widespread, the petals curling 

 backwards on the hedge, abandoning their beauty to 

 the sun. In the pasture over the stile a roan cow 

 feeds unmoved, calmly content, gathering the grass 

 with rough tongue. It is not only what you actually 

 see along the path, but what you remember to have 

 seen, that gives it its beauty. 



From hence the path skirts the hedge enclosing a 

 copse, part of which had been cut in the winter, so 

 that a few weeks since in spring the bluebells could 

 be seen, instead of being concealed by the ash branches 



