CHAPTER IX. 



THE COUNTRY LIFE. 



IT was then, very slowly, and after many hesita- 

 tions, false starts, deviations, and mistakes, that 

 Jefferies at last discovered himself and his real 

 powers. He had written, for obscure country 

 papers, pages of local descriptions : he had 

 written feeble and commonplace novels, which 

 all fell dead at their birth, and of which none 

 survive to reproach his memory or to darken 

 the splendour of his later work. He had also 

 written practical common -sense papers on 

 agriculture, the farmer and the farm-labourer. 

 He thus worked his way slowly, first to the 

 mere mechanical art of writing, that is, to the 

 expression, somehow or other, of thought and 

 ideas ; next, when this was acquired, he en- 

 deavoured to depict society, of which he knew 



