•THE STORY OF MY HEART' 191 



first, as things competing with himself for maintenance, 

 destroying crops, and even threatening hfe by poison, 

 tooth, and claw; second, as objects of sport: so that it was 

 perhaps as true of him as of Fehx Aquila, in ' After London,' 

 that he ' could not at times shake off the apprehensions 

 aroused by untoward omens, as when he stepped upon the 

 adder in the woods.' To such a one walking in the earth, 

 and seeing how beast and fish spend half their time in 

 avoiding men, the thought must come either that they 

 are irreparably alien, or that we are at fault ; if, indeed, 

 that other thought does not intrude, that it were better 

 to lie silent, a faggot of ruddy, fleshless bones that cause 

 no loathing to the bright birds, than to crash through this 

 merry world of dancing plumes and limbs and leaves. 

 That we and they are at fault is the more hopeful view. 

 Jefferies seems to have chosen the first. But in his 

 ' Nature and Eternity,' an essay that has some things in 

 common with ' The Story of My Heart,' there are thoughts 

 so opposed to these fancies, and so much more in harmony 

 not only with the spirit of the best human thought, but 

 with Jefferies' work as a whole, that I shall use it here. 

 The following passage throws a little more light upon 

 the nature of Jefferies' vision : 



* It is only while in a dreamy, slumbrous, half-mes- 

 merized state that Nature's ancient papyrus roll can be 

 read — only when the mind is at rest, separated from care 

 and labour ; when the body is at ease, luxuriating in 

 warmth and delicious languor ; when the soul is in accord 

 and sympathy with the sunlight, with the leaf, with the 

 slender blades of grass, and can feel with the tiniest insect 

 which climbs up them as up a mighty tree. As the 

 genius of great musicians, without an articulated word 

 or printed letter, can carry with it all the emotions, so 

 now, lying prone upon the earth in the shadow, with 

 quiescent will, listening, thoughts and feelings rise re- 

 spondent to the sunbeams, to the leaf, to the very blade 

 of grass. Resting the head upon the hand, gazing down 

 upon the ground, the strange and marvellous inner sight 



