44 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
air it needs great space like this—a vastness of con- 
cavity and hollow—an equal caldron of valley and plain 
under, to the dome of the sky over, for no vessel of earth 
and sky is too large for the air-colour to fill. Thirty, 
forty, and more miles of eye-sweep, and beyond that 
the limitless expanse over the sea—the thought of the. 
eye knows no butt, shooting on with stellar penetration 
into the unknown. In a small space there seems a 
vacuum, and nothing between you and the hedge oppo- 
site, or even across the valley ; in a great space the void 
is filled, and the wind touches the sight like a thing 
tangible. The air becomes itself a cloud, and is coloured 
—recognised as a thing suspended; something real 
exists between you and the horizon. Now full of sun, 
and now of shade, the air-cloud rests in the expanse. 
_ It is summer, and the wind-birds top the furze; the 
bright stonechat, velvet-black and red and white, sits on 
the highest spray of the gorse, as if he were painted 
there. He is always in the wind on the hill, from the 
hail of April to August’s dry glow. All the mile-long . 
slope of the hill under me is purple-clad with heath 
down to the tree-filled gorge where the green boughs 
seem to jointhe purple. The corn-fields and the pastures 
of the plain—count them one by one till the hedges and 
squares close together and cannot be separated. The 
surface of the earth melts away as if the eyes insensibly 
shut and grew dreamy in gazing, as the soft clouds 
melt and lose their outline at the horizon. But dwelling 
there, the glance slowly finds and fills out something 
that interposes its existence between us and the further 
space. Too shadowy for the substance of a cloud, too 
delicate for outline against the sky, fainter than haze, 
something of which the eye has consciousness, but cannot 
put into a word to itself. Something is there. It is the 
