32 IDLEHURST : 



presently into separate columns, five or six from 

 horizon to horizon, with wide interspaces of very clear 

 sky. This formation, with the steady sailing motion 

 of the masses, suggests the thought of warships in 

 line, the old three-deckers with mountainous canvas, 

 not the present Vulcanian workshops. The wind 

 still blew fresh ; and after the exhausted rain every 

 distance and tone of the landscape was intensely 

 clear in a dead broad daylight, the sun held behind 

 one of those processions of towering cloud. In the 

 afternoon I walked over to Lycetts Farm to see old 

 Tomsett, and as I went every ploughed field, copse, 

 clump of bloomy tufted palm, or crook of road was a 

 piece of pure colour, purple or red-grey or creamy 

 white. A newly-rolled meadow on the hillside, seen 

 between fir trees near at hand, was a square of green 

 so vivid and full as almost to impress the eye like 

 flame. As I reached the crown of the hill, the 

 Forest Ridge rose into sight in the north, keenly 

 clear at the edge and glooming under the packing 

 clouds, a dark bar between a streak of pale green sky 

 and the strong inlay of colour in field and wood on 

 the nearer hills. The clouds, though broken from 

 their serried lines into detached mounds and rounded 

 piles the " herded elephants " of Keats still veiled 

 the sun, and it was the hour of local colour at the 



