6 : FIELD AND HEDGEROW., 
Now this to me speaks as the roll of thunder that 
cannot be denied—you must hear it ; and how can you 
shut your ears to what this lark sings, this violet tells, 
this little grey shell writes in the curl of its spire? The 
bitter truth that human life is no more to the universe 
than that of the unnoticed hill-snail in the grass should 
make us think more and more highly of ourselves as 
human—as men—living things that think. We must 
look to ourselves to help ourselves. We must think our- 
selves into an earthly immortality. By day and by 
night, by years and by centuries, still striving, studying, 
searching to find that which shall enable us to live a 
fuller life upon the earth—to have a wider grasp upon its 
violets and loveliness, a deeper draught of the sweet-briar 
wind. Because my heart beats feebly to-day, my trick- 
ling pulse scarcely notating the passing of the time, so 
much the more do I hope that those to come in future 
years may see wider and enjoy fuller than I have done; 
and so much the more gladly would I doall that I could 
to enlarge the life that shall be then. There is no hope 
on the old lines—they are dead, like the empty shells ; 
from the sweet delicious violets think out fresh petals of 
thought and colours, as it were, of soul. 
_ Never was such a worshipper of earth. The com- 
monest pebble, dusty and marked with the stain of the 
ground, seems to me so wonderful; my mind works 
round it till it becomes the sun and centre of a system 
of thought and feeling. Sometimes moving aside the 
tufts of grass with careless fingers while resting on the 
sward, I found these little pebble-stones loose in the 
crumbly earth among the rootlets. Then, brought out 
from the shadow, the sunlight shone and glistened on the 
particles of sand that adhered to it. Particles adhered 
to my skin—thousands of years between finger and 
