246 A FARMER'S YEAR 



root. The beet seem to have improved much owing to the warmer 

 temperature of the last few days, but I think that the weather is 

 still far from settled. 



To-night there was a very beautiful evening sky, broken here 

 and there by heavy heaps of cloud floating in a depth of the 

 intensest blue. One of these resembled a huge mountain in size 

 and shape, and on that side of it where struck the light of the 

 sinking sun, thrown upwards in fan-like rays from behind another 

 plumed and hearse-like bank of clouds, the appearance was as 

 though this aerial peak were piled with snowdrifts in enormous 

 masses, hanging high above each other like avalanches about to 

 fall, and fringed, all of them, with many coloured fires. The air 

 also was unusually quiet, so quiet that to the listener standing on the 

 crest of the Vineyard Hills every sound from Bungay, such as 

 those of the tolling bells, or of baying dogs, and even the song of 

 quite distant birds, floated to his ear with extraordinary distinct- 

 ness, while far away towards the horizon the thunder boomed from 

 time to time like the deep notes of a Dead March swelling from 

 some vast organ in the heavens to celebrate a demon's obsequies. 



June 23. — To-day was bench-day, but there was no business 

 except that of affiliation orders. In one of the cases the man, 

 who had brought a young girl, a servant in his parents' house, into 

 trouble, kept her from informing her mother of the facts by 

 threatening — so she swore, and it was not contradicted — that if 

 she did he 'would cut her throat.' After this sequel I wonder 

 with what feelings that couple regard each other to-day. Some 

 experience as a barrister in the Probate Court, and more of the 

 cases w'hich come before magistrates, makes me wonder at the 

 hardihood of those who suggest that ' naturalism ' of the French 

 school should be attempted in English fiction. If the naturalism 

 is to be real — and half the truth is but of little value — such 

 matters as I have instanced, together with the details of mental 

 disease and of moral obliquities, must be reported faithfully. 

 Nature in these aspects should be set out as she is. This, at any 



