iS2 IDLEHURST: 



were a recreation in themselves. The very air had 

 a new quality, the villages a climate of their own, 

 mixed breaths of stonebrash soil, limestone walls 

 and roofs, and many brooks ; wholly unlike the thatch, 

 faggot, dead-leaf, wood-fire smells of the Weald. This 

 pleasure in distinctions suggests that perhaps we do 

 not generally (to use a logical figure) look on life 

 intensively enough ; do so concern ourselves with the 

 denotations of things that the plurality of worlds 

 cannot hold us, when an acre of terrestrial meadow 

 might suffice all aspirations. Of course there is a 

 back side to this theory ; hideous subdivisions are 

 imaginable ; but I think that practically, in things 

 of the natural world, it deserves consideration. 



I found myself at home again on a still evening, 

 when the whole garden seemed to exhale, so to say, 

 the light imbibed during the burning day. The eight- 

 foot spikes of the delphinium looked like pale blue 

 fires ; the mounds of the Canterbury Bells showed 

 no dead purple or pink, but vibrant colour ; a white 

 rose against the green gloom of the yew hedge shone 

 with inward light like a star. The whole aspect is 

 one which is seen but twice or thrice in a summer, 

 under uncommon conditions of evening clearness 

 following a very bright day. 



Scents of mignonette and night-stocks, not the 



