flower-like eyes,
pale gold or honey-coloured hair; very white of skin, Leightonian,
almost diaphanous, so delicate as to make all other skins appear coarse
and made of clay. And with her beauty and a mysterious sweetness not
of the heart, since no heart there would be in that mist-cold body, she
would draw all hearts, ever inspiring, but never satisfying passion, her
beauty and alluring smiles being but the brightness of a cloud on which
the sun is shining.

Birds, driven by the fog to that sunlit spot, were all about me in
incredible numbers. Rooks and daws were congregating on the bushes,
where their black figures served to intensify the red-gold tints of the
foliage. At intervals the entire vast cawing multitude simultaneously
rose up with a sound as of many waters, and appeared now at last about
to mount up into the blue heavens, to float circling there far above the
world as they are accustomed to do on warm windless days in autumn. But
in a little while their brave note would change to one of trouble; the
sight of that immeasurable whiteness covering so much of the earth would
scare them, and led by hundreds of clamouring daws they would come down
again to settle once more in black masses on the shining yellow trees.

Close by a ploughed field of about forty acres was the camping-ground
of an army of peewits; they were travellers from the north perhaps, and
were quietly resting, sprinkled over the whole area. More abundant were
the small birds in mixed flocks or hordes--finches, buntings, and larks
in thousands on thousands, with a sprinkling of pipits and pied and grey
wagtails, all busily feeding on the stubble and fresh ploughed land.
Thickly and evenly distributed, they appeared to the vision ranging
over the brown level expanse as minute animated and variously coloured
clods--black and brown and grey and yellow and olive-green.

It was a rare pleasure to be in this company, to revel in their
astonishing numbers, to feast my soul on them as it were--little birds
in such multitudes that ten thousand Frenchmen and Italians might have
gorged to repletion on their small succulent bodies--and to reflect
that they were safe from persecution so long as they remained here in
England. This is something for an Englishman to be proud of.

After spending two hours at Crux Easton, with that dense immovable
fog close by, I at length took the plunge to get to Highclere. What
a change! I was at once where all form and col