2O Spring 



fans them with the soft breath of summer and smiles 

 from blue seas that reflect the blue of heaven, and 

 from white-crested wave and green swaying, waving 

 bough, and throat of bird and beast sings her tuneful 

 music, while the very moor is golden with gorse, and 

 every hedgeroot, and ditch, and waste corner has its 

 flower, can imagine no happier paradise. Nor is it 

 everyone who is able to take an interest in minute 

 and practically objectless observations ; who, for ex- 

 ample, at the season when dry rustling thickets have 

 not yet recovered from the dormancy of winter, are 

 content to sit on a scrubby knoll in the woodlands, 

 and while they watch the cloud shadows flicker and 

 pass over russet dead fern, and withered grass, count 

 the voices of the March wind how it rustles and 

 whispers in the low beech-leaves, spared by winter 

 storms, and travels with a long sigh through the 

 shrivelled herbage ; how it goes swish, swish, swish 

 among the bending tree-tops, and gives a long strong 

 sigh to the pollards ; how it laments on the height 

 and in the hollow circles in the faint beginning of 

 a roar that chokes and dies away ere its volume is 

 increased. Nay, it requires either a peculiar tempera- 

 ment or a long training to watch even the movements 

 of living things with quiet and continued patience. 

 There is close to a certain highway a still pond bor- 

 dered with oaks, and in spring it is as clear as to show 

 in sunny days every vein of the rotting leaves that 

 floor its bed. Being deflected by the trees, the wind 



