window, and which you can reach without even the formality of passing
through the hall and out by the front door. If you wish to enjoy
nature in the summer-time, you must attend to all these little
things. What stout old gentleman but knows that when he is seated
snugly in his easy chair by the winter evening fireside, he would
take up and read many pages in a volume which lay within reach of
his arm, though he would do without the volume, if in order to get
it he had to take the slight trouble of rising from his chair and
walking to a table half a dozen yards off? Even so must nature be
brought within easy reach of even the true lover of nature; otherwise
on a hundred occasions, all sorts of little, fanciful hindrances
will stand between him and her habitual appreciation. A very small
thing may prevent your doing a thing which you even wish to do;
but which you do not wish with any special excitement, and which
you may do at any time. I daresay some reader would have written
months since to a friend in India to whom he promised faithfully to
write frequently, but that when he sat down once or twice to write,
and pulled out his paper-drawer, lie found that all the thin Indian
paper was done. And so the upshot is, that the friend has been a
year out; and you have never written to him at all.

But to return to the point from which this deviation proceeded, I
repeat, that on a fine summer morning in the country it is excessively
difficult to take to your work. Apart from the repellent influence
which is in work itself, you think that you will miss so much. You
go out after breakfast (with a wide-awake hat, and no gloves) into
the fresh atmosphere. You walk round the garden. You look particularly
at the more eminent roses, and the largest trees. You go to the
stable-yard, and see what is doing there. There are twenty things
to think of: numberless little directions to give. You see a weedy