d'

--it remains simple; but by the use of far fewer words, and of fewer
orator's phrases, its unadorned directness has almost a positive
spiritual quality.

But these agricultural essays, good as they were, and absorbing as
they did all of Jefferies' social thoughts to the end of his life,
became less and less frequent as he grew less inclined and less able
to adapt his mind and style to the affairs of the moment.

In the same year as 'The Story of Swindon' he published 'Village
Churches' and 'Marlborough Forest' (_Graphic_, December 4 and
October 23, 1875). These and his unsuccessful novels remain to show
the direction of his more intimate thoughts in the third decade of
his life. They are as imperfect in their class as 'The Story of
Swindon' is perfect in its own. They are the earliest of their kind
from Jefferies' pen which have survived. He is dealing already with
another and a more individual kind of reality, and he is not yet at
home with it in words. He approaches it with ceremony--with the
ceremony of phrases like 'the great painter Autumn,' 'a very tiger
to the rabbit,' 'the titles and pomp of belted earl and knight.' But
here for the first time he is so bent upon himself and his object
that he casts only an occasional glance upon his audience, whereas
in his practical papers he has it continually in view, or even ready
to jog his elbow if he dreams. The full English hedges, which he
condemns as an agriculturist, he would now save from the modern
Goths; he can even be sorry for the death of beautiful jays. Here,
for the first time, it might occur to a student of the man that he
is more than his words express. He does not see Nature as he sees
the factory, and when he and Nature touch there is an emotional
discharge which blurs the sight, though presently it is to enrich
it. As yet we cannot be sure whether he is perfectly genuine or is
striving for an effect based upon a recollection of someone
else--probably it is both--when he writes:

'The heart has a yearning for the unknown, a longing to
penetrate the deep shadow and the winding glade, where, as it
seems, no human foot has been';

when he speaks of the '_visible_ silence' of the old church, or
exclaims:

'To us, each hour is of consequence, especially in this modern
day, which has invented the detestable creed that time is money.
But time is not money to Nature. She never hastens....'

But already he is expressing a thought, which he