46 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



sheer dark edges of woods; for in that contrast the grass 

 seems a new element, neither earth, nor water, nor sky — 

 under our feet like the earth, gleaming and even as 

 water, remote and celestial as the sky. And the voices 

 of the green growing in the rain are innumerable. The 

 very ground has now one voice of its own, the gurgle 

 of its soaking hollow places. 



HAMPSHIRE. 



The fields where the green is now greenest, those 

 bounded on two or more sides by woods, are of a kind 

 not peculiar to Hampshire. They are usually on the 

 greensand and lie in smooth, often winding, hollows 

 like the beds of rivers. Sometimes the banks of these 

 beds are steep, and they are clothed in woods or in hedges 

 of hornbeam, hazel, ash and thorn that have grown 

 almost to woods. The meadows are green broad rivers 

 running up between the dark trees that bathe their roots 

 in primroses. Sometimes there is a stream of water run- 

 ning down the midst of such a field, but as the stream, 

 being a boundary, is often lined with bushes, the par- 

 ticular charm is lost. In the perfect examples there is 

 the smoothness of the long hollowed meadow, the green, 

 the river-like form, the look of being a court or cloister 

 between the trees. Another kind of field of great charm 

 is made by the convexity of the land rising up from one 

 side or both of such a hollow meadow. These heaving 

 fields, some of a regular domed shape, are favourites of 

 the sunset light, in spring when they are grassy, in August 



