44 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



air it needs great space like this — a vastness of con- 

 cavity and hollow — an equal caldron of valley and plain 

 under, to the dome of the sky over, for no vessel of earth 

 and sky is too large for the air-colour to fill. Thirty, 

 forty, and more miles of eye-sweep, and beyond that 

 the limitless expanse over the sea — the thought of the 

 eye knows no butt, shooting on with stellar penetration 

 into the unknown. In a small space there seems a 

 vacuum, and nothing between you and the hedge oppo- 

 site, or even across the valley ; in a great space the void 

 is filled, and the wind touches the sight like a thing 

 tangible. The air becomes itself a cloud, and is coloured 

 — recognised as a thing suspended ; something real 

 exists between you and the horizon. Now full of sun, 

 and now of shade, the air-cloud rests in the expanse. 



It is summer, and the wind-birds top the furze ; the 

 bright stonechat, velvet-black and red and white, sits on 

 the highest spray of the gorse, as if he were painted 

 there. He is always in the wind on the hill, from the 

 hail of April to August's dry glow. All the mile-long 

 slope of the hill under me is purple-clad with heath 

 down to the tree-filled gorge where the green boughs 

 seem to join the purple. The corn-fields and the pastures 

 of the plain — count them one by one till the hedges and 

 squares close together and cannot be separated. The 

 surface of the earth melts away as if the eyes insensibly 

 shut and grew dreamy in gazing, as the soft clouds 

 melt and lose their outline at the horizon. But dwelling 

 there, the glance slowly finds and fills out something 

 that interposes its existence between us and the further 

 space. Too shadowy for the substance of a cloud, too 

 delicate for outline against the sky, fainter than haze, 

 something of which the eye has consciousness, but cannot 

 put into a word to itself. Something is there. It is the 



