WILD FLOWERS. 31 



a shrine and bows the head to the Madonna, so I 

 recall the picture and stoop in spirit to the aspiration 

 it yet arouses. For there is no saint like the sky, 

 sunlight shining from its face. 



The fir-tree flowered thus before the primroses 

 the first of all to give me a bloom, beyond reach but 

 visible, while even the hawthorn buds hesitated to 

 open. Primroses were late there, a high district and 

 thin soil ; you could read of them as found elsewhere 

 in January; they rarely came much before March, 

 and but sparingly then. On the warm red sand (red, 

 at least, to look at, but green by geological courtesy, 

 I think) of Sussex, round about Hurst of the Pierre- 

 points, primroses are seen soon after the year has 

 turned. In the lanes about that curious old mansion, 

 with its windows reaching from floor to roof, that 

 stands at the base of Wolstanbury Hill, they grow 

 early, and ferns linger in sheltered overhung banks. 

 The South Down range, like a great wall, shuts 

 off the sea, and has a different climate on either 

 hand; south by the sea hard, harsh, flowerless, 

 almost grassless, bitter, and cold ; on the north side, 

 just over the hill warm, soft, with primroses and 

 fern, willows budding and birds already busy. It is 

 a double England there, two countries side by side. 



On a summer's day Wolstanbury Hill is an island in 

 sunshine ; you may lie on the grassy rampart, high 

 up in the most delicate air Grecian air, pellucid 

 alone, among the butterflies and humming bees at 

 the thyme, alone and isolated ; endless masses of hills 

 on three sides, endless weald or valley on the fourth ; 

 all warmly lit with sunshine, deep under liquid sun- 



