CHILDREN OF EARTH 205 



the village was most fascinating. Like all beautiful things 

 in their great moments the whole scene was symbolic, 

 not only in the larger sense by expressing in an outward ;> 

 and visible way an inward grace, but in the sense that it 

 gathered up into itself the meanings which many other 

 scenes only partly and in a scattered way expressed. 



Two roads of a serpentining form that was perpetually 

 alluring from afar climbed the Down from the village 

 and, skirting the forest, ended in the white mountains of 

 the moon. At the tail of one of these roads the artist 

 lived. His work still further enlarged the harmony of 

 sky and down and village. For a short time I used to 

 wonder why it was that when I entered his studio the 

 harmony was prolonged into something even more huge 

 and gentle than seemed to have been designed. How came 

 it that he could safely hang his pictures on the wall of 

 the Down, as practically they were hung? 



It is not enough to say merely that it was because they 

 did not, as some landscapes seem to do, enter into com- 

 petition with Nature. The spirit that raised and sculp- 

 tured the Downs, that entered the beech and made a 

 melody of its silent towering and branching, that kept the 

 sky above alive and beautiful with the massiveness of 

 mountains and the evanescence of foam, was also in this 

 man's fingers. He was a great lover of these things, and 

 in his love for them combined the ecstasy of courtship 

 with the understanding of marriage. But he loved them 

 too well to draw and paint them. He was not of 

 those who tear themselves from a mistress to write a 

 sonnet on her face. No. He painted the images which . 

 they implanted — such was their love of him and his of 

 them — in his brain. There many a metamorphosis as 



