ght path, seems to make
the way clearer for those who follow; so may we also raise the
profession we adopt, and smooth the way for those who come after us.
But, even for those who are not Agriculturists, it must be admitted that
the country has special charms. One perhaps is the continual change.
Every week brings some fresh leaf or flower, bird or insect. Every month
again has its own charms and beauty. We sit quietly at home and Nature
decks herself for us.

In truth we all love change. Some think they do not care for it, but I
doubt if they know themselves.

"Not," said Jefferies, "for many years was I able to see why I went the
same round and did not care for change. I do not want change: I want the
same old and loved things, the same wild flowers, the same trees and
soft ash-green; the turtle-doves, the blackbirds, the coloured
yellow-hammer sing, sing, singing so long as there is light to cast a
shadow on the dial, for such is the measure of his song, and I want
them in the same place. Let me find them morning after morning, the
starry-white petals radiating, striving upwards up to their ideal. Let
me see the idle shadows resting on the white dust; let me hear the
humble-bees, and stay to look down on the yellow dandelion disk. Let me
see the very thistles opening their great crowns--I should miss the
thistles; the reed grasses hiding the moor-hen; the bryony bine, at
first crudely ambitious and lifted by force of youthful sap straight
above the hedgerow to sink of its weight presently and progress with
crafty tendrils; swifts shot through the air with outstretched wings
like crescent-headed shaftless arrows darted from the clouds; the
chaffinch with a feather in her bill; all the living staircase of the
spring, step by step, upwards to the great gallery of the summer, let me
watch the same succession year by year."

After all then he did enjoy the change and the succession.

Kingsley again in his charming prose idyll "My Winter Garden" tries to
persuade himself that he was glad he had never travelled, "having never
yet actually got to Paris." Monotony, he says, "is pleasant in itself;
morally pleasant, and morally useful. Marriage is monotonous; but there
is much, I trust, to be said in favour of holy wedlock. Living in the
same house is monotonous; but three removes, say the wise, are as bad as
a fire. Locomotion is regarded as an evil by our Litany. The Litany, as
usual, is right. 'Those who travel by land