--^ar NATURE NEAR LONDON 



But it is no wonder that these things are for- 

 gotten in the daily struggle of London. And if the 

 merchant spares an abstracted glance from the 

 morning or evening newspaper out upon the fields 

 from the carriage window, the furrows of the field 

 can have but little meaning. Each looks to him 

 exactly alike. To the farmers and the labourer 

 such and such a furrow marks an acre and has its 

 bearing, but to the passing glance it is not so. 

 The work in the field is so slow ; the passenger by 

 rail sees, as it seems to him, nothing going on ; the 

 corn may sow itself almost for all that is note- 

 worthy in apparent labour. 



Thus it happens that, although the cornfields and 

 the meadows come so closely up to the offices 

 and warehouses of mighty London, there is a line 

 and mark in the minds of men between them; the 

 man of merchandise does not see what the man 

 of the field sees, though both may pass the same 

 acres every morning. It is inevitable that it should 

 be so. It is easy in London to forget that it is 

 midsummer, till, going some day into Covent- 

 garden Market, you see baskets of the cornflower, 

 or blue-bottle as it is called in the country, ticketed 

 " Corinne " and offered for sale. The lovely azure 

 of the flower recalls the scene where it was first 

 gathered long since at the edge of the wheat. 



By the copse here now the teazles lift their spiny 

 _n8 



