the woodland or by the meadow path, at the water's side or on the dead
dry heap of fagots. There is no settled succession, no fixed and formal
order--always the unexpected; and you cannot say, 'I will go and find
this or that.' The sowing of life in the spring time is not in the set
straight line of the drill, nor shall you find wild flowers by a foot
measure. There are great woods without a lily of the valley; the
nightingale does not sing everywhere. Nature has no arrangement, no plan,
nothing judicious even; the walnut trees bring forth their tender buds,
and the frost burns them--they have no mosaic of time to fit in, like a
Roman tesselated pavement; nature is like a child, who will sing and
shout though you may be never so deeply pondering in the study, and does
not wait for the hour that suits your mind. You do not know what you may
find each day; perhaps you may only pick up a fallen feather, but it is
beautiful, every filament. Always beautiful! everything beautiful! And
are these things new--the ploughman and his team, the lark's song the
green leaf? Can they be new? Surely they have been of old time! They are,
indeed, new--the only things that are so; the rest is old and grey, and a
weariness.




NATURE AND BOOKS.



What is the colour of the dandelion? There are many dandelions: that
which I mean flowers in May, when the meadow-grass has started and the
hares are busy by daylight. That which flowers very early in the year has
a thickness of hue, and is not interesting; in autumn the dandelions