INTRODUCTION 



JCHARD JEFFERIES lived closer to 

 Nature than any other man of his 

 day. In beautiful language he has ex- 

 pressed the impressions and thoughts 

 inspired by all he beheld, the landscape, the 

 glory of the day and night, the sweep of the 

 horizon, the mood of the sea, the sky, the valleys 

 and hills, the spirit of the outer world that lay 

 about him. He not only saw, he felt Nature. 

 The wind that whistled through the grass, or 

 sighed in the tops of the dark fir trees, spoke 

 to him a mystic language. The great sun in 

 unclouded splendour, slowly passing over the up- 

 lifted hills, told him a part of their secret. He 

 was, in a word, the scribe of all Nature, and so 

 much a part of all he saw that he seems himself 

 to be the sunlight, the grass, and the air. 



His life was one largely of the spirit longing 

 passionately for the fullest soul expression the 

 life more abundant. That remarkable masterpiece, 



