"I got me out of Brighton early, walked through Hassocks and Hurstpierpoint, and strolled on in any direction that invited (for I had the whole lovely day to myself), choosing chiefly byways and sequestered paths approached by stiles.
"The day was superb. The sky, after a rainy night, was a rich deep blue, and across it sailed great white-grey clouds, the shadows of which chased each other—albeit solemnly and with dignity—over field and meadow. The fields, sown with corn already tall, were burnished green—they shone in the sunlight. The meadows were deeper in colour. The slopes of the downs changed their hues every moment; every acre changed, according as it caught the light direct, or through a thin cloud, or was immersed in shade by a big and thick one. The ditches and the little banks by the road, out of which the trim hedgerows sprang, were green with a hundred little plants and weeds—the dock, the nettle, groundsel, stick-a-bobs, ivy of every hue and shape, mullein, the alder well in leaf, and the hawthorn here and there in flower.—
"Breakfast over. The most delicious bacon, the freshest of eggs, milk that might have masqueraded as cream; and all served with the extremity of respectful civility. A fire smouldering in the hearth; a terrier longing to make friends; otherwise they shut the door and leave me to quiet privacy.
"The greenness of the hedges was exquisite. And here and there the primroses in profusion—and the violets—and birds. England teems with life. I heard the thrush—'It is Spring! It is Spring! O the joy! I tell you it is—is—is!' And the blackbirds screaming out of a bush, pretending to be frightened, but only looking for an excuse to shout. The ring-doves, really disturbed and rising with noisy wings. The rooks, lost in real wonderment that anyone should stop and look at them for five minutes, and 'cawing' and 'cahing' in vociferous interrogation. Querulous tits, chirping hedge-sparrows, cheeping linnets and finches—by the hundreds and hundreds."
A mere peep (but a peep photographed on the spot), and giving but a poor glimpse of a scene the exact like of which you will not get elsewhere the wide world over.—And, by the way, shouldst ever find thyself at this self-same village of Poynings, omit not to examine the Early Perpendicular church;—the alms-box is an ancient thurible.
VIII
Autumn Reveries
§ 9
This was in the spring. Autumn in England is equally lovely. In the new world—at least in the northern regions—there is a chill in the fall of the year. The cold north-western winds, cradled amidst palæocrystic ice, and blowing over tundra and prairie, are untempered by Gulf Stream or ocean. Untempered, too, by cloud and moisture, they cut keen, and reveal the leafless landscape in all its bareness. And it may be that they bring with them the thought that for many months to come that landscape will be bare indeed—unless covered with a shroud of snow.
Far different is autumn in England—I write (this time) situate in the basin of the Thames, and for many weeks I have been watching summer slowly give up its glowing glories in order that other glories, not less wonderful in colour, may take their place. For England is never colourless; nay, in England, all through the year, the colours are warm and sweet and comforting. The very trunks and twigs of the trees are warm with browns and greens and purples, the result of the mosses and lichens, minute epiphytic and parasitic vegetation which the humid climate so greatly fosters. Even brick walls, the stepping-stones in brooks, wooden palings—everything constructed by man, Nature soon mellows with a gentle hand; so that, in place of stark and staring edifices where the bare boards or the dull paint form blotches on the scene, you have everywhere a great harmony of colour—violets shading into green; greens gliding into softest yellows; and these again deepening into warm and beautiful orange and gold and red.