104 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



seen behind the last screen of all. I am not sure if 

 these were to follow the downland shepherd to his 

 lowly home, to converse familiarly every day and live 

 intimately with him, that they would not be dis- 

 appointed, and conclude that the differences between 

 him and others of his rank and race, who have other 

 occupations — the labourer of the weald for instance — 

 are very much on the surface and hardly worth 

 troubling about. 



I class myself somewhere between the two ex- 

 tremes : not satisfied with the mere semblance or 

 appearance of things, seeing men as trees and rocks, 

 or as works of art, I am nevertheless not teased — 

 "tormented," De Quincey would have written — with 

 that restless desire to pry into and minutely examine 

 the secret colour and texture of the mind of every 

 person I meet. It is the mental attitude of the natu- 

 ralist, whose proper study is not mankind but animals, 

 including man ; who does not wish to worry his brains 

 overmuch, and likes to see very many things with 

 vision a little clearer than the ordinary, rather than 

 to see a very few things with preternatural clearness 

 and miss all the rest. 



In the case of the downland shepherd, this com- 

 paratively superficial knowledge which contents me 

 has made me greatly admire him. That he differs 

 considerably from others on the surface we cannot 

 but see ; and it would indeed seem strange if this 

 had not been the case, since the conditions of his life 



