of nature's solitude. Thus the old parish, which was
not by any means an ideal place to be born and bred in, had its
compensations for a holiday schoolboy who had Milton, and Klopstock, and
Bunyan at his finger-ends, and had hell and the plains of heaven within
an easy ramble from the paternal doorstep. But the special memory about
which I set out to write was the one which immediately follows on the
baby experience already recorded. It is almost as brief and isolated in
itself; but I know by after association precisely where it took place,
and I am almost persuaded that I know who was my companion.

I think it is Mr Ruskin who speaks of our rural hedgerows as having been
the pride and glory of our English fields, and the shame and disgrace
of English husbandry. In the days I write of, they were veritable
flower-gardens in their proper season. What with the great saucer-shaped
elderberry blooms, and the pink and white dogroses, and the honeysuckle,
and the white and purple foxgloves, and harebell and bluebell, and the
starlike yellow-eyed daisy, there was an unending harvest for hand
and eye. But the observation of all these things came later. Below the
hedges the common English bracken grew, in occasional profusion, and
it was a young growing spray of this plant which excited in my mind the
very first sense of beauty I had ever known. It was curved in a gentle
suggestion of an interrogation note. In colour, it was of a greenish-red
and a very gentle yet luxuriant green. It was covered with a harmless
baby down, and it was decorated at the curved tip with a crown-shaped
scroll. There is really no need in the world to describe it, for one
supposes that even the most inveterate Cockney has, at one time or
another, seen the first tender offshoot of the commonest fern which
grows in England.

From the time at which I achieved my first pedestrian triumph until I
looked at this delight and wonder, I remember nothing. A year or two had
intervened, and I was able to toddle about unaided; but, for anything I
can actually recall, I might as well have been growing in my sleep. But
I shall never forget it, and I have never experienced anything like
it since. Whether I could at that time think in words at all, I do not
know; but the beauty, the sense of the charm of the slender, tender
thing went into my heart with an actual pang of pleasure, and my
companion reproved me for crying about nothing. I don't remember crying;
but I rec