Pictures are very dull and gloomy to it, and very contrasted colours like
those the French use are necessary to fix the attention. Their dashes of
pink and scarlet bring the faint shadow of the sun into the room. As for
our painters, their works are hung behind a curtain, and we have to peer
patiently through the dusk of evening to see what they mean. Out-of-door
colours do not need to be gaudy--a mere dull stake of wood thrust in the
ground often stands out sharper than the pink flashes of the French
studio; a faggot; the outline of a leaf; low tints without reflecting
power strike the eye as a bell the ear. To me they are intensely clear,
and the clearer the greater the pleasure. It is often too great, for it
takes me away from solid pursuits merely to receive the impression, as
water is still to reflect the trees. To me it is very painful when
illness blots the definition of outdoor things, so wearisome not to see
them rightly, and more oppressive than actual pain. I feel as if I was
struggling to wake up with dim, half-opened lids and heavy mind. This one
yellowhammer still sits on the ash branch in Stewart's Mash over the
sward, singing in the sun, his feathers freshly wet with colour, the same
sun-song, and will sing to me so long as the heart shall beat.

The first conscious thought about wild flowers was to find out their
names--the first conscious pleasure,--and then I began to see so many
that I had not previously noticed. Once you wish to identify them there
is nothing escapes, down to the little white chickweed of the path and
the moss of the wall. I put my hand on the bridge across the brook to
lean over and look down into the water. Are there any fish? The bricks of
the pier are covered with green, like a wall-painting to the surface of
the stream, mosses along the lines of the mortar, and among the moss
little plants--what are these? In the dry sunlit lane I look up to the
top of the great wall about some domain, where the green figs look over
upright on their stalks; there are dry plants on the coping--what are