houses. In a land remote from commerce, full of beautiful building, and with perfect building material everywhere close at hand, it is not strange that the tradition of beauty should have survived longer than elsewhere.
This upper Thames valley, well-wooded and abundantly watered, is a land of birds. The blackbirds sing at Kelmscott after they have fallen silent elsewhere. The little island formed by the backwater close to the house was always filled with song from a hundred throats. In Morris's letters from Kelmscott there are constant allusions to the bird-life about it. The two following passages belong to the season of late summer:
"The birds were very delightful about us; I have been of late so steeped in London that it was a quite fresh pleasure to see the rooks about, who have been very busy in this showery weather. There was no lack of herons in these upper waters, and in the twilight the stint or summer snipe was crying about us and flitting from under the bank and across the stream: such a clean-made, neat-feathered, light grey little chap he is, with a wild musical little note like all the moor-haunting birds."
"We have had all the birds here again. The herons have been stalking about the field in the gravest manner; and I have seen the kingfishers very busy. One ducked down into the water before me and came out again with a little fish. I saw an owl last night come sailing along, and suddenly turn head over heels and down in the grass; after a mouse I suppose: such a queer action I never saw."
Another letter in a few brief vivid touches gives a picture of the birds in October:
"The western sky is getting leaden grey and the
