DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 73 



or next to nothing to him, but whose other senses 

 were all developed to the highest state of perfection. 



No doubt Ruskin is, before everything, an artist : 

 in other words, he looks at nature and all visible 

 things with a purpose, which I am happily without : 

 and the reflex effect of his purpose is to make nature 

 to him what it can never appear to me a painted 

 canvas. But this subject, which I have touched 

 on in a single sentence, demands a volume. 



Ruskin wrote of the cathedral daws, " That drift 

 of eddying black points, now closing, now scatter- 

 ing, now settling suddenly into invisible places 

 among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless 

 birds that fill the whole square with that strange 

 clangour of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing." 

 For it seemed to me that he had seen the birds but 

 had not properly heard them ; or else that to his 

 mind the sound they made was of such small con- 

 sequence in the effect of the whole scene so in- 

 significant an element compared with the sight 

 of them that it was really not worth attending 

 to and describing accurately. 



Possibly, in this particular case, when in speak- 

 ing of the daws he finished his description by throw- 

 ing in a few words about their voices, he was thinking 

 less of the impression on his own mind, presumably 



