8 FIELD AND HEDGEROW, 



specks, whirling and twisting in fury, ice raining in small 

 shot of frost, howling, sleeting, groaning ; the ground 

 like iron, the sky black and faintly yellow — brutal 

 colours of despotism— heaven striking with clenched 

 fist. When at last the general surface cleared, still 

 there remained the trenches and traverses of the enem}-, 

 his ramparts drifted high, and his roads marked with 

 snow. The black firs on the ridge stood out against the 

 frozen clouds, still and hard ; the slopes of leafless 

 larches seemed withered and brown ; the distant plain 

 far down gloomy with the same dull yellowish blackness. 

 At a height of seven hundred feet the air was sharp as 

 a scythe — a rude barbarian giant wind knocking at the 

 walls of the house with a vast club, so that we crept 

 sideways even to the windows to look out upon the 

 world. There was everything to repel — the cold, the 

 frost, the hardness, the snow, dark sky and ground, leaf- 

 lessness ; the very furze chilled and all benumbed. Yet 

 the forest was still beautiful. There was no day that 

 we did not, all of us, glance out at it and admire it, and 

 say something about it Harder and harder grew the 

 frost, yet still the forest-clad hills possessed a somethinL^- 

 that drew the mind open to their largeness and grandeur. 

 Earth is always beautiful — always. Without colour, or 

 leaf, or sunshine, or song of bird and flutter of butterfl}''s 

 wing ; without anything sensuous, without advantage or 

 gilding of summer — the power is ever there. Or shall 

 we not say that the desire of the mind is ever there, and 

 will satisfy itself, in a measure at least, even with the 

 barren wild ? The heart from the moment of its first 

 beat instinctively longs for the beautiful ; the means \\ < 

 possess to gratify it are limited — we are always trying; 

 to find the statue in the rude block. Out of the vast 

 block of the earth the mind endeavours to carve itself 



