CO ATE FARM. 39 



tinually reading to him out of that great 

 book. 



So a strange thing came to pass. Most of 

 us who go away from our native place forget 

 it, or we only remember it from time to time ; 

 the memory grows dim ; when we go back we 

 are astonished to find how much we have for- 

 gotten, and how distorted are the memories 

 which remain. Kichard Jefferies, however, 

 who presently left Coate, never forgot the old 

 place. It remained with him every tree, 

 every field, every hill, every patch of wild 

 thyme all through his life, clear arid distinct, 

 as if he had left it but an hour before. In 

 almost everything he wrote Coate is in his 

 mind. Even in his book of " Wild Life 

 Eound London " the reader thinks sometimes 

 that he is on the wild Wiltshire Downs, while 

 the wind whistles in his ears, and the lark is 

 singing in the sky, and far, far away the 

 sheep-bells tinkle. 



Why, in the very last paper which he ever 

 wrote it appeared in Longman's Magazine 

 two months after his death his memory goes 

 back to the hamlet where he was born. He 



