300 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



still greater aspirations than it has ever known since first 

 a flint was chipped before the glaciers. . . .'* 



So, also, he wants an art that will face the real and yet 

 idealize. * He who has got the sense of beauty in his 

 eye can find it in things as they really are.' His is the 

 true realism, and his philosophy of art is excellent when 

 he comments : ' In these landscape days we put our 

 pictures on the wall only, and no imagination into the 

 things we handle and use.' f 



Consciously often, unconsciously sometimes, he is feel- 

 ing after the causes of this harmony between Nature 

 and the works of men. A statue known as ' Venus 

 Accroupie ' in the Louvre brings him and us almost 

 in sight of them : 



' At a third visit it seemed to me that the statue had 

 grown much more beautiful in the few days which had 

 elapsed since I first saw it. Pondering upon the causes 

 of this increasing interest, I began to see that one reason 

 was because it recalled to my memory the loveliness 

 of Nature. Old days which I had spent wandering 

 among deep meadows and by green woods came back to 

 me. In such days the fancy had often occurred to me 

 that, besides the loveliness of leaves and flowers, there 

 must be some secret influence drawing me on as a 

 hand might beckon. The light and colour suspended in 

 the summer atmosphere, as colour is in stained but trans- 

 lucent glass, were to me always on the point of becoming 

 tangible in some beautiful form. The hovering lines and 

 shape never became sufficiently defined for me to know 

 what form it could be, yet the colours and the light 

 meant something which I was not able to fix. . . . Here 

 there came back to me this old thought born in the 

 midst of flowers and wind-rustled leaves, and I saw that 

 with it the statue before me was in accord. The living 

 original of this work was the human impersonation of 

 the secret influence which had beckoned me on in the 



* Preface to Natural History ofSelborne. 

 I 'Field Sports in Art,' Field and Hedgerow. 



