FOOTPATHS 15 



white cuckoo-flowers, dandelions, yarrow, and so on, all 

 carelessly sown broadcast without order or method, just 

 as negligently as they are named here, first remembered, 

 first mentioned, and many forgotten. 



Highest and coarsest of texture, the red-tipped sorrel 

 a crumbling red so thick and plentiful that at sunset 

 the whole mead becomes reddened. If these were in 

 any way set in order or design, howsoever entangled, the 

 eye might, as it were, get at them for reproduction. But 

 just where there should be flowers there are none, whilst 

 in odd places where there are none required there are 

 plenty. 



In hollows, out of sight till stumbled on, is a mass of 

 colour ; on the higher foreground only a dull brownish 

 green. Walk all round the meadow, and still no vantage 

 point can be found where the herbage groups itself, 

 whence a scheme of colour is perceivable. There is no 

 " artistic " arrangement anywhere. 



So, too, with the colours of the shades of green some- 

 thing has already been said and here are bright blues 

 and bright greens, yellows and pinks, positive discords 

 and absolute antagonisms of tint side by side, yet without 

 jarring the eye. Green all round, the trees and hedges ; 

 blue overhead, the sky ; purple and gold westward, where 

 the sun sinks. No part of this grass can be represented 

 by a blur or broad streak of colour, for it is not made up 

 of broad streaks. It is composed of innumerable items 

 of grass blade and flower, each in itself coloured and 

 different from its neighbour. Not one of these must be 

 slurred over if you wish to get the same effect. 



Then there are drifting specks of colour which can- 

 not be fixed. Butterflies, white, parti- coloured, brown, 

 and spotted, and light blue flutter along beside the foot- 

 path ; two white ones wheel about each other, rising 



