The Pleasures of Jime 71 



from the world, he need see nothing but the wren 

 fluttering in and out of her nest below the bank, hear 

 nothing but the song that is no song of the water 

 bickering over the gravel and sliding away among 

 flags and ferns. He will learn nothing, and gain 

 nothing, at least nothing measurable in utilitarian 

 scales ; yet he shall assimilate the stuff of many ex- 

 quisite memories. Nature is a whimsical mistress. 

 She bursts headlong into the presence of minds pre- 

 occupied with heroic endeavour, she delights in visiting 

 vacancy, but for them that search for her clamantly 

 all these she avoids. If the brookside grow tedious, 

 the wcods can never pall, and by woods are meant 

 neither strips of plantation which you may look right 

 through, nor newly-planted carefully tended orna- 

 mental forestings, but old and wild and neglected 

 woodlands where ' cool mosses deep ' are flowering in 

 the vividest hues, and fallen boles rot undisturbed, 

 and the briar-rose clambers up the pine, and the 

 natural thicket is hedged with rank ferns. Not yet 

 is the foliage so thick but the sun may carpet the 

 grass with a pattern of leaves of light in some shady 

 corner of an open glade. To hearken to the cry of 

 breeding pheasants ; or watch the brown snake glide 

 out to bask him in the heat ; or fall into reverie, and 

 let your life merge in the life of grass, and leaf, and 

 tree that is another unforgettable experience, another 

 imperishable gift of June. 



Further afield are resting places still more 



