NOVEMBER



A November day at the end of the month--the country is left to those who
live in it. The scattered visitors who took lodgings in the summer in
the villages have all departed, and the recollection that they have been
here makes the solitude more complete. The woods in which they wandered
are impassable, for the rain has been heavy, and the dry, baked clay of
August has been turned into a slough a foot deep. The wind, what there
is of it, is from the south-west, soft, sweet and damp; the sky is
almost covered with bluish-grey clouds, which here and there give way
and permit a dim, watery gleam to float slowly over the distant
pastures. The grass for the most part is greyish-green, more grey than
green where it has not been mown, but on the rocky and broken ground
there is a colour like that of an emerald, and the low sun when it comes
out throws from the projections on the hillside long and beautifully
shaped shadows. Multitudes of gnats in these brief moments of sunshine
are seen playing in it. The leaves have not all fallen, down in the
hollow hardly any have gone, and the trees are still bossy, tinted with
the delicate yellowish-brown and brown of different stages of decay.
The hedges have been washed clean of the white dust; the roads have been
washed; a deep drain has just begun to trickle and on the meadows lie
little pools of the clearest rainwater, reflecting with added loveliness
any blue patch of the heavens disclosed above them. The birds are
silent save the jackdaws and the robin, who still sings his
recollections of the summer, or his anticipations of the spring, or
perhaps his pleasure in the late autumn. The finches are in flocks, and