th. It is to be detected in many
sentences in 'Vignettes,' and in the concluding prayer, 'Let the
heart come out from the shadow of roofs to the open glow of the
sky...'--even in the plea to the mechanics in 'A King of Acres'
(_Chambers's_, January, 1884) not to 'pin their faith to any theory
born and sprung up among the crushed and pale-faced life of modern
time, but to look for themselves at the sky above the highest
branches ... that they might gather to themselves some of the
leaves--mental and spiritual leaves--of the ancient forest, feeling
nearer to the truth and soul, as it were, that lives on in it.' It
is in the aspiration and hope--in the sense of 'hovering on the
verge of a great truth,' of 'a meaning waiting in the grass and
water,' of a 'wider existence yet to be enjoyed on the earth'--in
the 'increased consciousness of our own life,' gained from sun and
sky and sea--it is everywhere in 'Sun and Brook' and 'On the
Downs.' It suffuses the sensuous delicacy and exuberance and the
spiritual joy of 'Nature and Eternity.' That paper belongs to, and
in a measure corrects, 'The Story of My Heart.' There is less
eloquence than in the autobiography, and a greater proportion of
that beautiful simplicity that is so spiritual when combined with
the characteristic cadence of Jefferies at his best. The mystic has
a view of things by which all knowledge becomes real--or
disappears--and all things are seen related to the whole in a
manner which gives a wonderful value to the least of them. The
combination of sensuousness and spiritual aspiration in this and
other essays produces a beauty perhaps peculiar to Jefferies--often
a vague beauty imperfectly adumbrated, as was the meaning of the
universe itself in his mood of 'thoughts without words, mobile like
the stream, nothing compact that can be grasped and stayed: dreams
that slip silently as water slips through the fingers.' In 'Nature
and Eternity' this is all the more impressive because Coate Farm
and its fields, Jefferies' birthplace and early home, is the scene
of it. That beauty haunts the last four essays of this book as it
haunts 'The Story of My Heart,' like a theme of music, always a
repetition, and yet never exactly the same. 'The Dawn' is one of
the most beautiful things which Jefferies wrote after his
awakening. The cadences are his best--gentle, wistful, not quite
certain cadences, where the effect of the mere sound cannot be
detached from the effect of the