126 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



he never understood it was closed to him 

 from the beginning. Nature herself stood 

 before him, though he neither saw nor heard 

 her, as Balaam could not see the angel, 

 and barred his way. But when he discovered 

 his own incomparable gift, which was not until 

 he was nearly thirty years of age, he sprang 

 suddenly before the world as one who could 

 speak of Nature and her wondrous works in 

 field and forest, as no man ever spake before. 



There is a passage in Thomas Hardy's 

 " Woodlanders " which might have been 

 written of Richard Jefieries. The words, which 

 could only have been written by one who 

 himself knows the country life, concern a pair, 

 not one : 



" The casual glimpses which the ordinary 

 population bestowed upon that wondrous 

 world of sap and leaves called the Hintock 

 woods had been, with these two, a clear gaze. 

 They had been possessed of its finer mysteries 

 as of commonplace knowledge : had been able 

 to read its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; 



