1 50 mature Studies in Berkshire. 



Plan to unify all lands. The winds, far more than any 

 work of man, bring the ends of the earth together. 

 They are the great levellers of barriers. They are the 

 democrats of nature. There are no walls they will 

 not overleap. They recognise no distinctions of race 

 or of rank. They carry their boons with unswerving 

 impartiality. They bear their desolations with un- 

 sparing vigour. They turn this earth into a very small 

 place. They make neighbours of the most separated 

 coasts. 



Before the storm has crossed the Mississippi River, 

 the winds have borne the white plumes of the cirrus 

 clouds, the forerunners of the gale, to the lightship 

 off Sandy Hook ; and the warning signal flutters for 

 the sailors going out to sea. The winds pick up the 

 dust of a volcano in one continent and drop it on 

 another. They bear the airs of the equator to the 

 arctic circle. They waft men's ships from end to end 

 of this globe. They carry the germs of the grippe 

 " around the world in eighty days." But just as will- 

 ingly they bear great clouds of pollen or the seeds of 

 innumerable plants, to scatter them in new lands, and 

 cause new crops to grow in waste places. They 

 know no east, no west, no north, no south. To them 

 the world is one neighbourhood. The winds are a 

 great natural illustration of a law of God. All nations 

 are as one village. All mankind is one brotherhood. 

 While men are building their Chinese walls of one 

 sort and another, creeds, political platforms, state 

 boundaries, tariffs, tongues and languages, forts and 



