The great stone of the fallen cromlech, crouching down afar off in the
plain behind me, cast its shadow in the sunny morn as it had done, so
many summers, for centuries--for thousands of years: worn white by the
endless sunbeams--the ceaseless flood of light--the sunbeams of
centuries, the impalpable beams polishing and grinding like rushing
water: silent, yet witnessing of the Past; shadowing the Present on the
dial of the field: a mere dull stone; but what is it the mind will not
employ to express to itself its own thoughts?

There was a hollow near in which hundreds of skeleton leaves had settled,
a stage on their journey from the alder copse, so thick as to cover the
thin grass, and at the side of the hollow a wasp's nest had been torn out
by a badger. On the soft and spreading sand thrown out from his burrow
the print of his foot looked as large as an elephant might make. The wild
animals of our fields are so small that the badger's foot seemed foreign
in its size, calling up thought of the great game of distant forests. He
was a bold badger to make his burrow there in the open warren,
unprotected by park walls or preserve laws, where every one might see who
chose. I never saw him by daylight: that they do get about in daytime is,
however, certain, for one was shot in Surrey recently by sportsmen; they
say he weighed forty pounds.

In the mind all things are written in pictures--there is no alphabetical
combination of letters and words; all things are pictures and symbols.
The bird's-foot lotus is the picture to me of sunshine and summer, and of
that summer in the heart which is known only in youth, and then not
alone. No words could write that feeling: the bird's-foot lotus writes
it.