FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



Now this to me speaks as the roll of thunder that 

 cannot be denied — you must hear it ; and how can you 

 shut your ears to what this lark sings, this violet tells, 

 this little grey shell writes in the curl of its spire ? The 

 bitter truth that human life is no more to the universe 

 than that of the unnoticed hill-snail in the grass should 

 make us think more and more highly of ourselves as 

 human — as men — living things that think. We must 

 look to ourselves to help ourselves. We must think our- 

 selves into an earthly immortality. By day and by 

 night, by years and by centuries, still striving, studying, 

 searching to find that which shall enable us to live a 

 fuller life upon the earth — to have a wider grasp upon its 

 violets and loveliness, a deeper draught of the sweet-briar 

 wind. Because my heart beats feebly to-day, my trick- 

 ling pulse scarcely notating the passing of the time, so 

 much the more do I hope that those to come in future 

 years may see wider and enjoy fuller than I have done ; 

 and so much the more gladly would I do all that I could 

 to enlarge the life that shall be then. There is no hope 

 on the old lines — they are dead, like the empty shells ; 

 from the sweet delicious violets think out fresh petals of 

 thought and colours, as it were, of soul. 



Never was such a worshipper of earth. The com- 

 monest pebble, dusty and marked with the stain of the 

 ground, seems to me so wonderful ; my mind works 

 round it till it becomes the sun and centre of a system 

 of thought and feeling. Sometimes moving aside the 

 tufts of grass with careless fingers while resting on the 

 sward, I found these little pebble-stones loose in the 

 crumbly earth among the rootlets. Then, brought out 

 from the shadow, the sunlight shone and glistened on the 

 particles of sand that adhered to it. Particles adhered 

 to my skin — thousands of years between finger and 



