THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 15 



for the shadows of the clouds. They are never abrupt, 

 but, flowing on and on, make a type of infinity. A troop, 

 a clump, or a sprinkling of trees, a little wood, a house, 

 squares of wheat or newly-ploughed land, a long white 

 road, cannot detract from them — not even when the air 

 is so clear that all sounds and sights and smells are bright 

 and have a barb that plants them deep, and the hard 

 black rooks slide in crystal air under the blue. In 

 winter snow, to walk upon them is to walk on the clouds ; 

 their forms are those of the snow-drifts filed by the wind. 

 When they do not curve, they make that almost straight 

 horizontal line which, seen five or six miles off against a 

 pale evening sky through clear or misty air, is so signifi- 

 cant and so untranslatable. Taken separately, the Downs 

 have lines as fair as those of animals ; the light wavers on 

 their smooth and, as it were, muscular sides as it does 

 on the rippling haunches of a horse. Yet they have a 

 hugeness of undivided surface for which there is no com- 

 parison to be found on the earth, and but seldom in the 

 sky. They bring into the mind the thought that beauty — 

 whether of a poet's lines, or of a melody, or of a cloud, or 

 of shining water — is the natural and inseparable com- 

 panion to passionate, bold, true - hearted acts and 

 thoughts and emotions ; and with that thought the 

 question as to what great thought is expressed in these 

 sculptured leagues of grassy chalk. Here, it sometimes 

 appears, especially when the land has taken an alms of 

 twilight, the creative forces must have reposed after 

 mighty labours, and have had dreams which their deeds 

 have not equalled elsewhere. And it is little wonder that 

 we, who can create nothing except of snow or sand, should 

 be happy upon them, as if we hoped for a little while that 

 their waves might lead us to whatever fancy has painted 

 as desirable, lovely, and good. Yet it needs but to 

 scratch the soil to recall that they also are but transient, 

 the result of a myriad deaths, of changes and motives that 

 regard them no more than they regard us and our little acts 

 and great desires : that all flows away as water or wind. 



