DECEMBER 453 



them. Near at hand, forming the dip of a Httle valley, lay the 

 brook pasture, looking blue rather than green in colour beneath 

 the leaden clouds, and beyond it, right up to the sombre mass of 

 Tindale Wood, stretch upon stretch of rusty stubble and sullen 

 plough. 



Let the eye roam where it would, there was but one cheerful 

 thing at hand to catch it, the garlands of bright ivy clinging to 

 the hedgerow pollards, and at times in the thickest of the rain- 

 storms even these grew black. Then, to complete the picture, 

 patient and -solemn, the ploughmen wrapped in their thick 

 capes, toiled forward side by side, heedless of the lashing sleet, 

 heedless of the savage mnd ; up and down, continually up and 

 down the grey length of field, with the striving horses before 

 them and the complaining ploughs beneath their hands, very 

 embodiments indeed of the dignity and the doom of labour. 



December 31. — Yesterday was a day of sharp sleet-storms, 

 varied by intervals of sunshine, through which our ploughing 

 went on as usual ; but the dawn this morning, the last of the 

 year, was also, I think, the most beautiful. A white rime of frost 

 covered the ground, for at night it froze sharply, while the air 

 was so quiet and windless that no twig even stirred upon the 

 trees. One great loveliness lay upon the eastern sky, as though 

 there some vast and wondrous flower was bursting into bloom — 

 a perfect but ever-changing colour scheme of pink and yellow laid 

 upon a groundwork of pale and tender greens and broken into 

 lines and petals by streaks of fire pouring upwards from the rim of 

 the appearing sun. Strange to say, however, over against this glor\-, 

 as though at war with it, lay an ominous and gloomy sky, which, 

 while the sun rose, invaded and conquered the splendour in the 

 east, till the whole heaven grew dark and pregnant with rain or 

 snow to come. 



To study such a sight is to understand the hopelessness of art. 

 This morning's sunrise would have been enough to drive a 

 painter mad with envy and despair. 



