Towards democracy, S. 74

60 — Towards Democracy

O know well that it shall be. That the land they dwell on, that the Earth, for whatsoever people is worthy, shall -

become impossible to be separated from them—even in _

thought.

Of those who are truly the People, they are jealous of

their land ; the woods and the fields and the open sea are

covered with their love—inseparable from life.

Every hedgerow, every old lumb and coppice, the

nature of the soils in every field and part of a field, the suffs, the bedrock, pastures, ploughlands and fallows; the

quarries and places of the best stone for roadmending, -

building, walling, roofing, draining; the best stuff for mending .

footpaths ; the best water for miles round, and the taste and

quality of the various wells and springs; the clays for

puddling and for brickburning, the basseting out and dips of the beds ; the cattle and livestock up and down, their various breeds, treatment and condition ; the moors, forests, streams, rivers, seacoasts, familiar by sunlight, moonlight, starlight, and on dark nights—every nook and corner of them; the old trees and their histories, the waterside trees, and where pheasants frequently roost, and the places for netting rabbits

and hares, or for spearing trout by lantern-light; or where

the crab-appie and cluster-berry and mountain-flax and agrimony grow ;

The haunts of the wild duck and snipe, the decoy of the corncrake, the nests of the storm-cock and the water-hen

and the pewit ; the legends told of old hollows and caves and

crags ; the bold and beautiful headlands, the taste of the air