152 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



has frequently happened that, after I had established 

 as I imagmed a firm friendship with one, he has 

 suddenly snapped or growled at me. 



My account of that most extraordinary hullaballoo 

 among the hills made by the young shepherdess has 

 served to remind me of the subject I had set myself 

 to write about in this chapter, and which in all these 

 pages I have not yet touched upon — the wonderful 

 silence of the downs, and the effect of nature's more 

 delicate music heard in such an atmosphere. That 

 clear repeated call of the young shepherdess would 

 have sounded quite different from six to eight hundred 

 feet below on the flat weald, where it would have 

 mixed with other sounds, and a denser atmosphere 

 and hedges and trees would have muffled and made 

 it seem tame and commonplace. On the great smooth 

 hills, because of their silence and their thinner, purer 

 atmosphere, it fell startlingly on the sense, and the 

 prolonged cries had a wild and lonely expression. 



This silence of the hills does not impress one at 

 once if the mind is occupied with thinking, or the 

 eyes with seeing. But if one spends many hours 

 each day and many days in lonely rambles (and who 

 would not prefer to be alone in such a place ?), a 

 consciousness of it grows upon the mind. The quiet 

 too becomes increasingly grateful, and the contrast 

 between the hills and the lowland grows sharper with 



