distant objects gradually decays. On the contrary a child brought up
upon the African veldt, where he is daily confronted with almost
infinite distances, acquires what seems to be an almost preternatural
sharpness of vision. It is the same with hearing. The savage can
distinguish sounds which are entirely inaudible to the civilised man.
The footfall of his enemy, the beat of a horse's hoofs, the movement of
a lion in the jungle, are heard at what appear impossible distances. I
do not seek to offer any absolute explanation of these phenomena as
regards myself, but I state the fact that in returning to a natural
life I found a remarkable quickening of my physical senses. As my eye
became accustomed to the wide moorland prospects I found myself
increasingly able to discriminate distant objects. Flowers that had
seemed to me to smell pretty much alike, now had distinct fragrances.
I knew when I woke in the morning from which direction the wind came,
by its odour; the wind from the moorland brought the scent of heather
and wild thyme, the wind from the glen the scent of water.

It was the same with sound. Properly speaking there is no such thing
as silence in Nature. The silence, or what seems silence, is divisible
into a multitude of minute sounds. Everything in Nature is toiling and
straining at its task, the sap in the tree, the rock balanced on its
bed of clay, the grass-blade pushing and urging its way toward the sun.
And as there is no real silence, so there is no real solitude in a
world where every atom is vigorously at work. Wordsworth's conception
of Nature as a Presence becomes at once intelligible when we live close
to the heart of Nature. Had Wordsworth lived in towns his poetry could
never have been written, nor can its central conception of Nature as a
Presence be understood by the townsman. I had often enough read the
wonderful lines--