38 FRESH FIELDS 



in the Shawangunk range in New York. There 

 are passes in the Catskills that for the grandeur of 

 wildness and savageness far surpass anything the 

 Welsh mountains have to show. Then for exqui- 

 site and thrilling beauty, probably one of our mot- 

 tled rocky walls with the dicentra blooming from 

 little niches and shelves in April, and the colum- 

 bine thrusting out from seams and crevices clusters 

 of its orange bells in May, with ferns and mosses 

 clinging here and there, and the woodbine tracing 

 a delicate green line across its face, cannot be 

 matched anywhere in the world. 



Then, in our woods, apart from their treasures 

 of rocks, there is a certain beauty and purity un- 

 known in England, a certain delicacy and sw^eetness, 

 and charm of unsophisticated nature, that are native 

 to our forests. 



The pastoral or field life of nature in England is 

 so rank and full, that no woods or forests that I 

 was able to find could hold their own against it 

 for a moment. It flooded them like a tide. The 

 grass grows luxuriantly in the thick woods, and 

 where the grass fails, the coarse bracken takes its 

 place. There was no wood spirit, no wild wood 

 air. Our forests shut their doors against the fields ; 

 they shut out the strong light and the heat. Where 

 the land has been long cleared, the woods put out 

 a screen of low branches, or else a brushy growth 

 starts up along their borders that guards and pro- 

 tects their privacy. Lift or part away these branches, 

 and step inside, and you are in another world; new 



