92 FRESH FIELDS 



and exacting. Then I sought out the old naturalist 

 and taxidermist to whom I had a card from the 

 squire. He was a short, stout man, racy both in 

 look and speech, and kindly. He had a line collec- 

 tion of birds and animals, in which he took great 

 pride. He pointed out the woodlark and the black- 

 cap to me, and told me where he had seen and 

 heard them. He said I was too late for the night- 

 ingale, though I might possibly find one yet in 

 song. But he said she grew hoarse late in the 

 season, and did not sing as a few weeks earlier. 

 He thought our cardinal grosbeak, which he called 

 the Virginia nightingale, as fine a whistler as the 

 nightingale herself. He could not go with me that 

 day, but he would send his boy. Summoning the 

 lad, he gave him minute directions where to take 

 me, — over by Easing, around by Shackerford 

 church, etc., a circuit of four or five miles. Leav- 

 ing the picturesque old town, we took a road over a 

 broad, gentle hill, lined with great trees, — beeches, 

 elms, oaks, — with rich cultivated fields beyond. 

 The air of peaceful and prosperous human occu- 

 pancy which everywhere pervades this land seemed 

 especially pronounced through all this section. The 

 sentiment of parks and lawns, easy, large, basking, 

 indifferent of admiration, self-sufficing, and full, 

 everywhere prevailed. The road was like the most 

 perfect private carriage-way. Homeliness, in its 

 true sense, is a word that applies to nearly all Eng- 

 lish country scenes ; homelike, redolent of affection- 

 ate care and toil, saturated with rural and domestic 



