THE COUNTRY LIFE. 227 



radiating, striving upwards to their ideal. Let 

 me see the idle shadows resting on the white 

 dust ; let me hear the humble-bees, and stay 

 to look down on the rich dandelion disk. Let 

 me see the very thistles opening their great 

 crowns I should miss the thistles ; the reed- 

 grasses hiding the moorhen ; the bryony bine, 

 at first crudely ambitious and lifted by force 

 of youthful sap straight above the hedgerow 

 to sink of its own weight presently and pro- 

 gress with crafty tendrils ; swifts shot through 

 the air with outstretched wings like crescent - 

 headed shaftless arrows darted from the clouds ; 

 the chaffinch with a feather in her bill ; all the 

 living staircase of the spring, step by step, 

 upwards to the great gallery of the summer 

 let me watch the same succession year by 

 year." 



Therefore, and in return for this great love, 

 Nature rewarded him. Jefferies began, as 

 Thoreau recommends, by writing down every- 

 thing that he saw : he presently arrived at an 

 inconceivable power of minute observation. 

 Pages might be quoted to show this wonderful 



152 



