k of the cliff-like cutting; flowers bloom on the
verge above, against the line of the sky, and over the dark arch of the
tunnel. This, it is true, is summer; but it is the same in spring.
Before a dandelion has shown in the meadow, the banks of the railway are
yellow with coltsfoot. After a time the gorse flowers everywhere along
them; but the golden broom overtops all, perfect thickets of broom
glowing in the sunlight.

Presently the copses are azure with bluebells, among which the brake is
thrusting itself up; others, again, are red with ragged robins, and the
fields adjacent fill the eye with the gaudy glare of yellow charlock.
The note of the cuckoo sounds above the rushing of the train, and the
larks may be seen, if not heard, rising high over the wheat. Some birds,
indeed, find the bushes by the railway the quietest place in which to
build their nests.

Butcher-birds or shrikes are frequently found on the telegraph wires;
from that elevation they pounce down on their prey, and return again to
the wire. There were two pairs of shrikes using the telegraph wires for
this purpose one spring only a short distance beyond noisy Clapham
Junction. Another pair came back several seasons to a particular part of
the wires, near a bridge, and I have seen a hawk perched on the wire
equally near London.

The haze hangs over the wide, dark plain, which, soon after passing
Redhill, stretches away on the right. It seems to us in the train to
extend from the foot of a great bluff there to the first rampart of the
still distant South Downs. In the evening that haze will be changed to a
flood of purple light veiling the horizon. Fitful glances at the
newspaper or the novel pass the time; but now I can read no longer, for
I know, without any marks or tangible evidence, that the hills are
drawing near. There is always hope in the hills.

The dust of London fills the eyes and blurs the vision; but it
penetrates deeper than that. There is a dust that chokes the spirit, and
it is this that makes the streets so long, the stones so stony, the desk
so wooden; the very rustiness of the iron railings about the offices
sets the teeth on edge, the sooty blackened walls (yet without shadow)
thrust back the sympathies which are ever trying to cling to the
inanimate things around us. A breeze comes in at the carriage window--a
wild puff, disturbing the heated stillness of the summer day. It is easy
to tell where that came from--silently the Dow