Pages from a Journal with Other Papers | Page 6

begin, and spread themselves in a white sheet to the land.
A couple of gulls rise from the base of the cliffs to a height of about a hundred feet above them. They turn their heads to the south-west, and hover like hawks, but without any visible movement of their wings. They are followed by two more, who also poise themselves in the same way. Presently all four mount higher, and again face the tempest. They do not appear to defy it, nor even to exert themselves in resisting it. What to us below is fierce opposition is to them a support and delight. How these wonderful birds are able to accomplish this feat no mathematician can tell us. After remaining stationary a few minutes, they wheel round, once more ascend, and then without any effort go off to sea directly in the teeth of the hurricane.

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 whirl round in the air with graceful, shell-like convolutions as they descend, part separating, for no reason apparently, and forming a second flock which goes away over the copse. There is hardly any farm-work going on, excepting in the ditches, which are being cleaned in readiness for the overflow when the thirsty ground shall have sucked its fill. Under a bank by the roadside a couple of men employed in carting stone for road-mending are sitting on a sack eating their dinner. The roof of the barn beyond them is brilliant with moss and lichens; it has not been so vivid since last February. It is a delightful time. No demand is made for ecstatic admiration; everything is at rest, nature has nothing to do but to sleep and wait.

THE BREAK-UP OF A GREAT DROUGHT

For three months there had been hardly a drop of rain. The wind had been almost continuously north-west, and from that to east. Occasionally there were light airs from the south-west, and vapour rose, but there was nothing in it; there was no true south-westerly breeze, and in a few hours the weather-cock returned to the old quarter. Not infrequently the clouds began to gather, and there was every sign that a change was at hand. The barometer at these times fell gradually day after day until at last it reached a point which generally brought drenching storms, but none appeared, and then it began slowly to rise again and we knew that our hopes were vain, and that a week at least must elapse before it would regain its usual height and there might be a chance of declining. At last the disappointment was so keen that the instrument was removed. It was better not to watch it, but to hope for a surprise. The grass became brown, and in many places was killed down to the roots; there was no hay; myriads of swarming caterpillars devoured the fruit trees; the brooks were all dry; water for cattle had to be fetched from ponds and springs miles away; the roads were broken up; the air was loaded