40 THE OPEN AIR. 



the sunbeams of centuries, the impalpable beams 

 polishing and grinding like rushing water : silent, 

 yet witnessing of the Past ; shadowing the Present 

 on the dial of the field : a mere dull stone ; but what 

 is it the mind will not employ to express to itself 

 its own thoughts ? 



There was a hollow near in which hundreds of 

 skeleton leaves had settled, a stage on .their journey 

 from the alder copse, so thick as to cover the thin 

 grass, and at the side of the hollow a wasp's nest 

 had been torn out by a badger. On the soft and 

 spreading sand thrown out from his burrow the 

 print of his foot looked as large as an elephant 

 might make. The wild animals of our fields are 

 so small that the badger's foot seemed foreign in 

 its size, calling up the thought of the great game 

 of distant forests. He was a bold badger to make 

 his burrow there in the open warren, unprotected 

 by park walls or preserve laws, where every one 

 might see who chose. I never saw him by daylight : 

 that they do get about in daytime is, however, 

 certain, for one was shot in Surrey recently by 

 sportsmen ; they say he weighed forty pounds. 



In the mind all things are written in pictures- 

 there is no alphabetical combination of letters and 

 words; all things are pictures and symbols. The 

 bird's-foot lotus is the picture to me of sunshine and 

 summer, and of that summer in the heart which 

 is known only in youth, and then not alone. No 

 words could write that feeling: the bird's-foot lotus 

 writes it. 



When the efforts to photograph began, the difficulty 



