A SPRING HERESY 103 



about it lateral processes that gave to it the bulk and 

 form of heather blanched heather closely packed to 

 deceive the eye, but crumbling to dust beneath the 

 foot. The field hedgerows, quadrangular reefs of 

 whitest coral near at hand, appeared like solid walls 

 of chalk a few fields away. The trees, with 

 whitened trunks, and branches and twigs swollen to 

 unnatural bulk, stood like petrifications of some 

 strange vegetation of another age and clime. 



A whole week had gone to the building of this 

 wonderful scene, in windless air beneath a pro- 

 tective screen of fog ; in half an hour the screen 

 was drawn softly but wholly aside, and the noon sun 

 lighted it from an unclouded sky. Rarely can a 

 great artist have been more favoured in the prepara- 

 tion and exhibition of his work; but only one of 

 Nature's own craftsmen, working in the imperishable 

 stuff of frost and water, water and frost, with a 

 world-old art, could have borne to see it thus at 

 once transfigured and destroyed. 



For, spring had come indeed. The fields, for a 

 short time lustrous in their perfect whiteness; the 

 hedge-bordered lanes wondrous perspectives! 

 bedecked as for some triumphal fairy pageant ; the 

 trees, massively white with accumulated frost, 

 steamed and streamed for an hour beneath the 

 gently insinuative influence of the south, so that the 

 whole land seemed to be in flux. 



And there where I had seen them ere the general 

 fog enwrapped them a week before, was many a bird 

 or group of birds. They had flitted hither and thither 

 within narrow bounds, apparently without attempting 

 to escape from their darkened haunts. But, with 



