THISTLE-DOWN 



15 



maturity; perhaps, too, that strain of intense un- 

 natural feeling, which he so strangely misinterpreted, 

 and which in his book just named touches the borders 

 of insanity, would have been outgrown. I am not 





■^. J' 



Richard Jefferies' Cottage 



sure that he had not outlived that phase before 

 he died, since his latest work is decidedly of a higher 

 quality, and even when most inspired by passion, 

 essentially more sober than the famous Stori/. That 

 he would eventually have written a book about the 



