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RUSTIC NATURALISTS 



THE erection of the memorial to Richard JefFeries in 

 Salisbury Cathedral, and the raising of a fund for the 

 benefit of his family, are additional evidence of the 

 favour with which the public looks upon the work of 

 the prose-poet of the Downs country. His birthplace 

 at Cote Farm has even become a place of pilgrimage ; 

 and his admirers doubtless imagine that they trace in 

 the old farmhouse, and the daily life of its inmates, the 

 natural and appropriate environment of a consummate 

 writer on the wild life of the fields. 



The inference is a very natural one. But if such a 

 life and such surroundings thus predispose the mind 

 to see what JefFeries saw, and to interpret nature as he 

 interpreted it, why is it, we may ask, that so few of the 

 writers who have treated of these subjects have sprung 

 from the class to which JefFeries belonged ? And why 

 in the instances in which they have been born the 

 sons of small farmers, or labouring men, have they been 

 so reluctant to abide among the scenes which they 

 and JefFeries so charmingly described ? Thomas 

 Bewick is one of the few instances of a farm-bred 



p 



