IN FULL CAREER. 167 



It was somewhere about the year 1876 that I 

 myself first fell upon some of his work. I 

 remember the delight with which I drank, as a 

 bright and refreshing draught from a clear 

 spring-head, the story of the country life as set 

 forth by him, this writer, the like of whom I had 

 never before read. Why, we must have been 

 blind all our lives ; here were the most wonder- 

 ful things possible going on under our very 

 noses, but we saw them not. Nay, after reading 

 all the books and all the papers every one 

 that Jefferies wrote between the years 1876 and 

 1887, after learning from him all that he had 

 to teach, I cannot yet see these things. I see 

 a hedge ; I see wild rose, honeysuckle, black 

 briony herbe aux femmes battues, the French 

 poetically call it blackberry, hawthorn, and 

 elder. I see on the banks sweet wildflowers 

 w r hose names I learn from year to year, and 

 straightway forget because they grow not in 

 the streets. I know very well, because Jefferies 

 has told me so much, what I should be able 

 to see in the hedge and on the bank besides 

 these simple things; but yet I cannot see 

 them, for all his teaching. Mine alas ! 



