1 These familiar flowers, these well-remembered 

 bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these 

 furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of 

 personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows 

 such things as these are the mother tongue of 

 our imagination, the language that is laden with 

 all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting 

 hours of childhood left behind them.' 



GEORGE ELIOT. 



