40 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



over the mind is at certain impressible moments, and 

 more than Beaulieu as a place where men dwell, is that 

 ineffable freshness of nature, that verdure that like the 

 sunlight and the warmth of the sun penetrates to the 

 inmost being. Here I have remembered the old 

 ornithologist Willughby's suggestion, which no longer 

 seemed fantastic, that the furred and feathered creatures 

 inhabiting arctic regions have grown white by force of 

 imagination and the constant intuition of snow. And 

 here too I have recalled that modern fancy that the 

 soul in man has its proper shape and colour, and have 

 thought that if I came hither with a grey or blue or 

 orange or brown soul, its colour had now changed to 

 green. The pleasure of it has detained me long days in 

 spring, often straying by the river at its full, among the 

 broadly-branching oaks, delighting my sight with the 



new leaves 



against the sun shene, 

 Some very red, and some a glad light grene. 



Yet these same oak woods, great as their charm is, 

 their green everlasting gladness, have a less enduring 

 hold on the spirit than the open heath, though this 

 may look melancholy and almost desolate on coming 

 to it from those sunlit emerald glades with a green 

 thought in the soul. It seems enough that it is open, 

 where the wind blows free, and there is nothing between 

 us and the sun. It is a passion, an old ineradicable 

 instinct in us : the strongest impulse in children, savage 

 or civilised, is to go out into some open place. If 



