GLEAMS OF LIGHT. 107 



and all to no purpose; for no one has told 

 him the simplest law of all that Art is imita- 

 tion. One must not close the shutters, light 

 the lamp, and then paint a flower one has 

 never seen, as the painter thinks it ought to 

 have been. Yet this is what Jefferies was 

 doing. The young country lad, who knew 

 no other society than that of the farm and the 

 country town, was wasting and spoiling his 

 life in writing about people and things whom 

 he imagined. He was painting the flower 

 he had never seen as he thought it ought 

 to be. 



Well, the great success of the Times letters 

 seemed to have led to nothing. Yet it gave 

 him a better position in his native place. His 

 work was now so assured, and his income so 

 much improved though still slender enough 

 that in July, 1874, after a three years' en- 

 gagement, he was married. 



For the first six months of their marriage 

 the young pair lived on at Coate. They then 

 removed to a small house in Victoria Street, 

 Swindon, where their first child was born. 

 It is a happy thing to think that it was in the 



