The Open Air 



polishing and grinding like rushing water: silent, 

 yet witnessing of the Past; shadowing the Present 

 on the dial of the field : a mere dull stone ; but what 

 is it the mind will not employ to express to itself its 

 own thoughts ? 



There was a hollow near in which hundreds of 

 skeleton leaves had settled, a stage on their journey 

 from the alder copse, so thick as to cover the thin 

 grass, and at the side of the hollow a wasp's nest 

 had been torn out by a badger. On the soft and 

 spreading sand thrown out from his burrow the print 

 of his foot looked as large as an elephant might make. 

 The wild animals of our fields are so small that the 

 badger's foot seemed foreign in its size, calling up 

 thought of the great game of distant forests. He 

 was a bold badger to make his burrow there in the 

 open warren, unprotected by park walls or preserve 

 laws, where every one might see who chose. I never 

 saw him by daylight: that they do get about in 

 daytime is, however, certain, for one was shot in 

 Surrey recently by sportsmen; they say he weighed 

 forty pounds. 



In the mind all things are written in pictures 

 there is no alphabetical combination of letters and 

 words; all things are pictures and symbols. The 

 bird's-foot lotus is the picture to me of sunshine and 

 summer, and of that summer in the heart which 

 is known only in youth, and then not alone. No 

 words could write that feeling: the bird's-foot lotus 

 writes it. 



When the efforts to photograph began, the difficulty 

 was to fix the scene thrown by the lens upon the plate. 

 There the view appeared perfect to the least of details, 

 worked out by the sun, and made as complete in 

 miniature as that he shone upon in nature. But 



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