310 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



sang, and it always seemed to me that I could feel the 

 ripphng and the singing and the sparkHng back through 

 the centuries. The brook is dead, for when man goes 

 Nature ends. I dare say there is water there still, but it 

 is not the brook ; the brook is gone, hke John Brown's 

 soul. There used to be clouds over the fields — white 

 clouds in blue summer skies. I have Hved a good deal 

 on clouds. They have been meat to me often ; they 

 bring something to the spirit which even trees do not. 

 I see clouds now sometimes when the iron grip of hell 

 permits for a minute or two ; they are very different 

 clouds, and speak differently. I long for some of the 

 old clouds that had no memories. There were nights in 

 those times over those fields — not darkness, but night- — 

 full of glowing suns and glowing richness of life that 

 sprang up to meet them. The nights are there still — 

 they are everywhere ; nothing local in the night — but it 

 is not the night to me seen through the window. 

 ' There used to be footpaths. . . .'* 

 There was the footpath where, ' a hundred years ago, 

 a little old man with silver buckles on his shoes ' used to 

 walk once a week to drink milk with his children at the 

 farm — Coate Farm, for Richard Jefferies' father has put 

 a note alongside this passage, saying ' My father ' — and 

 the path to the railway where Richard, as a boy, used to 

 go to see the broad-gauge engines sweep by. 



' I wish I could feel like that now. The feeling is not 

 quite gone, even now, and I have often since seen those 

 great broad-gauge creatures moving alive to and fro like 

 Ezekiel's wheel-dream beside the platforms of Babylon 

 with much of the same old delight. Still, I never went 

 back with them to the faded footpath. They are all 

 faded now, these footpaths. 'f 



The walnut-trees at home are dead, where he used to 



sit with a ' great volume by Sir Walter Scott,' and balance 



the luxuries of reading and eating nuts ; where he read 



of the lost caravan that found princely hospitality at an 



* ' My Old Village,' Field and Hedgerow. f Ibid. 



