LATER ESSAYS 213 



come to us before it is so late that we take the gift in 

 weariness and dismay. In the spot-markings of butter- 

 flies' wings, of flowers, of eggs, he says, ' the sun has 

 written his commands, and the wind inscribed deep 

 thought,' and tells us that to-day the immortals who 

 walked on the earth when they were composed are among 

 us yet, ' if only we will give up the soul to these pure 

 influences.' The abundance, ' the open-handed gener- 

 osity and divine waste of Nature,' again, lead him away 

 from the meanness forced upon us by circumstances to 

 the belief that some day ' no one need ever feel anxiety 

 about mere subsistence '; and yet it is pitiful that the 

 infant oak will not be transplanted to safety, and will 

 perish.' 



In ' Sunlight in a London Square ' the thought of the 

 reapers sadly labouring sends him forward to ' a race 

 able to enjoy the flowers with which the physical work 

 is strewn.' For himself and others he desires longer, 

 more joyous life, and the passion of his wish seems half 

 a realization ; he desires it for the very birds — ' a hundred 

 years just to feast on the seeds and sing and be utterly 

 happy and oblivious of everything but the moment they 

 are passing.' In the same mood comes a pleading for 

 wiser treatment of ' the sullen poor who stand scornful 

 and desperate at the street-corners.' The holy spring, 

 the water and the light, give him of their truth, of the 

 sense of beauty which they bring with them ; in his 

 love of its purity there is an even profounder sentiment 

 than in Ruskin's passionate upbraiding of those who 

 defiled the Wandel springs. In ' The Pageant of Summer' 

 the hope is repeated : ' Earth holds secrets enough to 

 give them the life of the fabled Immortals.' Part at 

 least of the charm of that and the kindred essays lies in 

 the linking of spiritual things to their physical causes 

 among the coombes, the long wavering heights, the barley 

 and the grass, of the Downs, and the flowers of Coate 

 Farm itself. Earth, the mighty mother, emerges almost 

 personified in these essays, benign, abundant, hale. In 



