218 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



Down in the hollow the breeze does not come, and 

 the bennets do not whistle, yet gazing upwards at the 

 vapour in the sky I fancy I can hear the mass, as 

 it were, of the wind going over. Standing presently 

 at the edge of the steep descent looking into the 

 Weald, it seems as if the mighty blast rising from 

 that vast plain and glancing up the slope like an 

 arrow from a tree could lift me up and bear me 

 as it bears a hawk with outspread wings. 



A mist which does not roll along or move is drawn 

 across the immense stage below like a curtain. There 

 is, indeed, a brown wood beneath ; but nothing more 

 is visible. The plain is the vaster for its vague 

 uncertainty. From the north comes down the wind, 

 out of the brown autumn light, from the woods below 

 and twenty miles of stubble. Its stratum and current 

 is eight hundred feet deep. 



Against my chest, coming up from the plough down 

 there (the old plough, with the shaft moving on a 

 framework with wheels), it hurls itself against the 

 green ramparts, and bounds up savagely at delay. 

 The ears are filled with a continuous sense of some- 

 thing rushing past ; the shoulders go back square ; 

 an iron-like feeling enters into the sinews. The air 

 goes through my coat as if it were gauze, and strokes 

 the skin like a brush. 



The tide of the wind, like the tide of the sea, swirls 

 about, and its cold push at the first causes a lifting 

 feeling in the chest — a gulp and pant — as if it were too 

 keen and strong to be borne. Then the blood meets 

 it, and every fibre and nerve is filled with new vigour. 

 I cannot drink enough of it. This is the north wind. 



