256 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



Constans Aquila. The inland sea over which Fehx adven- 

 tures to the swampy site of London is Coate Reservoir 

 enlarged. It is a solemn, playful sequel to ' Bevis.' 



' The Relapse into Barbarism ' is one of Jefferies' 

 masterpieces in description. The calm, ironical detail 

 with which the change is depicted has a touch of Herodotus 

 and of Ordericus Vitalis, but is all his own, and reveals 

 an unsuspected strength of remorseless logic and restraint. 

 Hedges and woods spread so that ' by the thirtieth year 

 there was not one single open place, the hills only excepted, 

 where a man could walk, unless he followed the tracks of 

 wild creatures, or cut himself a path.' Ditches had been 

 filled up, weirs and bridges destroyed. Thames and 

 Severn overflowed, and made an inland sea between the 

 Cotswolds and the Downs, for the ruins of London blocked 

 the river, and were changed into swamp ' which no man 

 dare enter, since death would be his inevitable fate. 

 There exhales from this oozy mass so fatal a vapour that 

 no animal can endure it. The black water bears a greenish- 

 brown floating scum, which for ever bubbles up from the 

 putrid mud at the bottom. When the wind collects the 

 miasma, and, as it were, presses it together, it becomes 

 visible as a low cloud which hangs over the place. The 

 cloud does not advance beyond the limits of the marsh, 

 seeming to stay there by some constant attraction ; and 

 well it is for us that it does not, since at such times when 

 the vapour is thickest the very wild-fowl leave the reeds, 

 and fly from the poison. There are no fishes ; neither 

 can eels exist in the mud, nor even newts. It is dead.' 

 The same, or as bad a fate, has overtaken other cities. 

 ' The sites,' says the historian, ' are uninhabitable because 

 of the emanations from the ruins. Therefore they are 

 avoided. Even the spot where a single house has been 

 known to liave existed is avoided by the hunters in the 

 wood. They say, when they are stricken with ague or 

 fever, that they must have unwittingly slept on the site 

 of an ancient habitation.' The wild animals are descended 

 from our domestic kinds ; they are the white and black 



