1 8 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



fagots from the hedgerows ; to-morrow there will be a 

 merry, merry note in the ash copse, the chiffchaffs' ring- 

 ing call to arms, to arms, ye leaves ! By-and-by a ben- 

 net, a bloom of the grass ; in time to come the furrow, 

 as it were, shall open, and the great buttercup of the 

 waters will show a broad palm of gold. You never know 

 what will come to the net of the eye next — a bud, a 

 flower, a nest, a curled fern, or whether it will be in the 

 woodland or by the meadow path, at the water's side or 

 on the dead dry heap of fagots. There is no settled 

 succession, no fixed and formal order — always the unex- 

 pected ; and you cannot say, ' I will go and find this or 

 that.' The sowing of life in the spring time is not in the 

 set straight line of the drill, nor shall you find wild flowers 

 by a foot measure. There are great woods without a 

 lily of the valley ; the nightingale does not sing every- 

 where. Nature has no arrangement, no plan, nothing 

 judicious even ; the walnut trees bring forth their tender 

 buds, and the frost burns them — they have no mosaic of 

 time to fit in, like a Roman tesselated pavement ; nature 

 is like a child, who will sing and shout though you may 

 be never so deeply pondering in the study, and does not 

 wait for the hour that suits your mind. You do not 

 know what you may find each day ; perhaps you may 

 only pick up a fallen feather, but it is beautiful, every 

 filament. Always beautiful ! everything beautiful ! 

 And are these things new — the ploughman and his team, 

 the lark's song the green leaf? Can they be new? 

 Surely they have been of old time ! They are, indeed, 

 new — Ihe only things that are so ; the rest is old and 

 grey, and a weariness. 



