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spirit of earth and sky and sea. His whole soul was enraptured 
with the delight and beauty of the outside world. Nature 
was to him full of inexpressibly beautiful thoughts. In his 
essay on “ Meadow Thoughts ” (an extract from which the 
Lecturer read), he likens the inexpressible thoughts quivering 
in the azure overhead to the swallows hovering yet not alighting 
He tells us in beautiful words of the sublime extravagance 
of nature, saying that prodigality and superfluity are stamped 
on everything she does : “ There is no natural lack. Wherever 
there is lack among us it is from artificial causes which in- 
telligence should remove.” Jefferies was an intent observer 
of the habits of the creatures of the open air. He acquired 
also a deep knowledge of the details of the life and customs 
of the country people. His “ Wild Life in a Southern 
Country,” “ Round about a great Estate,” and “ The Game- 
keeper at Home ” are full of interesting records of natural 
history and rural life, and will be of permanent value because 
of their faithful presentation of the conditions of the English 
country life of the period. In these books Jefferies struck 
a new note. They are full of interest to the countryman 
whose life is passed in the surroundings they depict ; but they 
are of equal interest to the townsman to whom the country- 
side is as yet an unopened book. Jefferies was both botanist 
and naturalist, but he had the gift of conveying to the ordinary 
man his deep knowledge of nature gained through these media 
in plain and simple English without recourse to technical 
terms. Here then is the first thing we owe to Jefferies. He 
made the country, and nature as a whole, intelligible and 
simple to the ordinary man. 
These earlier books are untroubled by speculative thought, 
or reflection upon the problems and mysteries of life. Later, 
after he has left the scenes of his youth, and come into sharp 
contact in London with the hardships of life, there comes 
into his work a deeper and more personal note, and he often 
invests the happenings of nature with something of a human 
feeling of the joy and sorrow of life. In his essay,” The Hours 
of Spring,” this new poetic interpretation of nature is seen 
at its fullest. 
Side by side with this more personal interpretation of nature, 
there comes yet a wider and broader human feeling into 
Jefferies’ writing. In all his later work there is a profound 
sympathy with the aspirations of the common people, whose 
struggle for existence, he considered, prevented their enjoying 
to the full the beautiful, glorious, joyful world which he 
knew so well. In his little idyllic story, “ St. Guido,” he 
expresses his indignation against the shortsighted, jealous 
