14 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



and sown with the thoughts that ripened in ' The Story of 

 My Heart.' Hither, too, came Felise, the beautiful lover 

 in ' The Dewy Morn,' when she began to love. At the 

 top and in the camp are the same flowers, and some 

 windy thorns and furze ; and near by the ' folly ' of 

 twenty-one lean beeches — in growth like firs — and the 

 stump of another, which make a landmark over half the 

 county. Below, to the south, the charlock-yellow or 

 bean-grey or corn-coloured squares of the arable extend 

 to the woods and the far-off dark green elmy country of 

 Cricklade ; a flock of sheep seems to be blown along, or 

 to flow as upon a stream. East, south, and west flint- 

 diggers' cartways, old roads, and hares' paths lead over 

 the Downs. In the rarely-seen hamlets of the dusty 

 corn-land or the moist vale are the houses of the men 

 Jefferies knew — farmers and labourers, slow of speech, 

 more used to deeds whether at work or play. Back- 

 swording died late hereabouts ; and you may still see an 

 old man's shins all ridgy from the kicks earned in matches 

 at straightforward kicking with heavy boots against 

 unarmed shins ; they drank devoutly, and so helped to 

 sharpen Richard Jefferies' nerves and to wear his body out 

 before he was forty ; but they did more for him than that, 

 these men of a different blood from the townsman's, 

 though they have not given up their secrets to those who 

 believe they have none. After their bread and cheese at 

 ' The Bull ' or ' The Plough,' they will sit at their second or 

 third pint without a word and without the activity to light 

 a pipe for half an hour ; yet one of the same race will say 

 of Jefferies that he lay on his back and dreamed when he 

 should have been helping his family — which is, after all, 

 but one dreamer's uncharitableness to another in a world 

 of dreams. 



Jefferies often thought of the sea upon these hills. 

 The eye sometimes expects it. There is something oceanic 

 in their magnitude, their ease, their solitude — above all, in 

 their liquid forms, that combine apparent mobility with 

 placidity, and in the vast plaj^ground which they provide 



