THROUGH THE CHANGING YEAR 137 



There are people who raise no objection to 

 nature being modified to serve useful ends, but 

 think it nothing short of lese-majesty to say- 

 that nature may need to be modified in order 

 to become beautiful. Perdita, we remember, 

 would have nothing to do with flowers that had 

 been modified by art. I have already pointed 

 out how much of the beauty of the country is 

 due to man's work in it. And it has to be said 

 that nature does not at every turn provide us with 

 works of art in the pictorial sense. That is our 

 business, not nature's, who only furnishes us 

 with materials and suggestions. One would 

 like to hear the pictorial merits of spring dis- 

 cussed by a company of landscape painters. 

 But their works are more instructive than their 

 words could be ; and, unless I am in error, 

 there are far more pictures painted of either 

 summer, autumn or winter than of spring. 

 Certainly, every year, when spring is well 

 advanced, I find myself quite impatiently 

 wanting the oak and the ash to get into leaf. 

 It is here and there that spring is beautiful : in 

 the details, not as a whole. 



So Richard Jefferies, prose-poet and natural- 

 ist, says, in the course of an eloquent passage 



