^UTTY AUTUMN. 149 



from them their white brilliance. They come slower 

 with a drowsy light, which casts a less defined shadow 

 of the still oaks. The yellow and brown leaves in 

 the oaks, in the elms, and the beeches, in their turn 

 affect the rays, and retouch them with their own hue. 

 An immaterial mist across the fields looks like a cloud 

 of light hovering on the stubble : the light itself made 

 visible. 



The tawniness is indistinct, it haunts the sunshine, 

 and is not to be fixed, any more than you can say 

 where it begins and ends in the complexion of a 

 brunette. Almost too large foi their cups, the acorns 

 have a shade of the same hue now before they become 

 brown. As it withers, the many-pointei leaf of the 

 white bryony and the bine as it shrivels, in like 

 manner, do their part. The white thistle-down, which 

 stays on the bursting thistles because there is no 

 .wind to waft it away, reflects it ; the white is pushed 

 aside by the colour that the stained sunbeams bring. 



Pale yellow thatch on the wheat ricks becomes 

 a deeper yellow ; broad roofs of old red tiles smoulder 

 under it. What can you call it but tawniness ? — the 

 earth sunburnt once more at harvest time. Sunburnt 

 and brown — for it deepens into brown. Brown 

 partridges, and pheasants, at a distance brown, their 

 long necks stretched in front and long tails behind 

 gleaming in the stubble. Brown thrushes just ventur- 

 ing to sing again. Brown clover hay ricks; the 

 bloom on the third crop yonder, which was recently 

 a bright colour, is fast turuing brown, too. 



Here and there a thin layer of brown leaves rustles 

 under foot. The scaling bark on the lower part of 



