than haze, something of which the eye has consciousness, but cannot put
into a word to itself. Something is there. It is the air-cloud adhering
like a summer garment to the great downs by the sea. I cannot see the
substance of the hills nor their exact curve along the sky; all I can see
is the air that has thickened and taken to itself form about them. The
atmosphere has collected as the shadow collects in the distant corner of
a room--it is the shadow of the summer wind. At times it is so soft, so
little more than the air at hand, that I almost fancy I can look through
the solid boundary. There is no cloud so faint; the great hills are but a
thought at the horizon; I _think_ them there rather than see them; if I
were not thinking of them, I should scarce know there was even a haze,
with so dainty a hand does the atmosphere throw its covering over the
massy downs. Riding or passing quickly perhaps you would not observe
them; but stay among the heathbells, and the sketch appears in the south.
Up from the sea over the corn-fields, through the green boughs of the
forest, along the slope, comes a breath of wind, of honey-sweetened air,
made more delicate by the fanning of a thousand wings.

The labour of the wind: the cymbals of the aspen clashing, from the
lowest to the highest bough, each leaf twirling first forwards and then
backwards and swinging to and fro, a double motion. Each lifts a little
and falls back like a pendulum, twisting on itself; and as it rises and
sinks, strikes its fellow-leaf. Striking the side of the dark pines, the
wind changes their colour and turns them paler. The oak leaves slide one
over the other, hand above hand, laying shadow upon shadow upon the white
road. In the vast net of the wide elm-tops the drifting shadow of the
cloud which the wind brings is caught for a moment. Pushing aside the
stiff ranks of the wheat with both arms, the air reaches the sun-parched
earth. It walks among the mowing-grass like a farmer feeling the crop
with his hand one side, and opening it with his walking-stick the other.