LOVERS OF NATURE 211 



selves in the ground and keep quite hidden from 

 sight, had used his eyes to some purpose. This was 

 a real observation. 



Just as a skilled physician, in diagnosing a case, 

 picks out the significant symptoms and separates 

 them from the rest, so the real observer, with eye 

 and ear, seizes what is novel and characteristic in the 

 scenes about him. His attention goes through the 

 play at the surface and reaches the rarer incidents 

 beneath or beyond. 



Richard Jefferies was not strictly an observer; he 

 was a living and sympathetic spectator of the na- 

 ture about him, a poet, if you please, but he tells 

 us little that is memorable or suggestive. His best 

 books are such as the "Gamekeeper at Home," and 

 the " Amateur Poacher," where the human element 

 is brought in, and the descriptions of nature are re- 

 lieved by racy bits of character drawing. By far 

 the best thing of all is a paper which he wrote 

 shortly before his death, called " My Old Village." 

 It is very beautiful and pathetic, and reveals the 

 heart and soul of the man as nothing else he has 

 written does. I must permit myself to transcribe 

 one paragraph of it. It shows how he, too, was 

 under the spell of the past, and such a recent past, 

 too: 



" I think I have heard that the oaks are down. 

 They may be standing or down, it matters nothing 

 to me ; the leaves I last saw upon them are gone for 

 evermore, nor shall I ever see them come there 

 again, ruddy in spring. I would not see them 



