tery of the English language, great as that is, than on their
power of seeing what is before them. It has been to me therefore a
matter of much interest to know which aspects of Nature have given the
greatest pleasure to, or have most impressed, those who, either from
wide experience or from their love of Nature, may be considered best
able to judge. I will begin with an English scene from Kingsley. He is
describing his return from a day's trout-fishing:--

"What shall we see," he says, "as we look across the broad, still, clear
river, where the great dark trout sail to and fro lazily in the sun?
White chalk fields above, quivering hazy in the heat. A park full of
merry hay-makers; gay red and blue waggons; stalwart horses switching
off the flies; dark avenues of tall elms; groups of abele, 'tossing
their whispering silver to the sun'; and amid them the house,--a great
square red-brick mass, made light and cheerful though by quoins and
windows of white Sarsden stone, with high peaked French roofs, broken by
louvres and dormers, haunted by a thousand swallows and starlings. Old
walled gardens, gay with flowers, shall stretch right and left. Clipt
yew alleys shall wander away into mysterious glooms, and out of their
black arches shall come tripping children, like white fairies, to laugh
and talk with the girl who lies dreaming and reading in the hammock
there, beneath the black velvet canopy of the great cedar tree, like
some fair tropic flower hanging from its boughs; and we will sit down,
and eat and drink among the burdock leaves, and then watch the quiet
house, and lawn, and flowers, and fair human creatures, and shining
water, all sleeping breathless in the glorious light beneath the
glorious blue, till we doze off, lulled by the murmur of a thousand
insects, and the rich minstrelsy of nightingale and blackcap, thrush and
dove.

"Peaceful, graceful, complete English country life and country houses;
everywhere finish and polish; Nature perfected by the wealth and art of
peaceful centuries! Why should I exchange you, even for the sight of all
the Alps?"

Though Jefferies was unfortunately never able to travel, few men have
loved Nature more devotedly, and speaking of his own home he expresses
his opinion that: "Of all sweet things there is none so sweet as fresh
air--one great flower it is, drawn round about; over, and enclosing us,
like Aphrodite's arms; as if the dome of the sky were a bell-flower
drooping down ov