Talking of horses, how admirable was that answer of Dr. Johnson’s, when a lady asked him how on earth he allowed himself to describe the word pastern in his dictionary as the knee of a horse.  “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance,” was his laconic reply.  So great a man could well afford to confess utter ignorance of matters outside his own sphere.  But how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any subject under the sun, unless it be bimetallism or some equally unfashionable and abstruse (though not unimportant) problem of the day!

What beautiful shades of colour are noticeable in the trees in the early part of May!  The ash, being so much later than the other trees, remains a pale light green, and shows up against the dark green chestnuts and the still darker firs.  But what shall I say of the great spreading walnut whose branches hang right across the stream in our garden in the Cotswold Valley?

About the middle of May the walnut leaves resemble nothing so much as a mass of Virginia creeper when it is at its best in September.  Beautiful, transparent leaves of gold, intermingled with red, glisten in the warm May sunshine,—­the russet beauties of autumn combined with the fresh, bright loveliness of early spring!

Not till the very end of May will this walnut tree be in full leaf.  He is the latest of all the trees.  The young, tender leaves scent almost as sweetly as the verbena in the greenhouse.  It is curious that ash trees, when they are close to a river, hang their branches down towards the water like the “weeping willows.”  Is this connected, I wonder, with the strange attraction water has for certain kinds of wood, by which the water-finder, armed with a hazel wand, is able to divine the presence of aqua pura hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth?  What this strange art of rhabdomancy is I know not, but the “weeping” ash in our garden by the Coln is one of the most beautiful and shapely trees I ever saw.  It will be an evil day when some cruel hurricane hurls it to the ground.  We have lost many a fine tree in recent years, some through gales, but others, alas I by the hand of man.

A few years ago I discovered a spot about a quarter of a mile from my home which reminded me of the beautiful Eton playing-fields,

     “Where once my careless childhood stray’d,
      A stranger yet to pain.”

It consisted of a few grass fields shut off by high hedges, and completely encircled by a number of fine elm trees of great age and lovely foliage.  At one end a broad and shallow reach of the Coln completed the scene.

Having obtained a long lease of the place, I grubbed up the hedges, turned three small fields into one, and made a cricket ground in the midst.  My object was to imitate as far as possible the “Upper Club” of the Eton playing-fields.