Transcribed from the 1882 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Eversley Rectory] PROSE IDYLLS, NEW AND OLD. * * * * * BY REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, CANON OF WESTMINSTER. [Picture: Drawing of bird on branch, singing] _NEW EDITION_. * * * * * London: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1882. _The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved_. CONTENTS. PAGE I. ‘A Charm of Birds’ 1 II. Chalk-Stream Studies 27 III. The Fens 93 IV. My Winter-Garden 133 V. From Ocean to Sea 175 VI. North Devon 223 I. ‘_A CHARM OF BIRDS_.’ {1} IS it merely a fancy that we English, the educated people among us at least, are losing that love for spring which among our old forefathers rose almost to worship? That the perpetual miracle of the budding leaves and the returning song-birds awakes no longer in us the astonishment which it awoke yearly among the dwellers in the old world, when the sun was a god who was sick to death each winter, and returned in spring to life and health, and glory; when the death of Adonis, at the autumnal equinox, was wept over by the Syrian women, and the death of Baldur, in the colder north, by all living things, even to the dripping trees, and the rocks furrowed by the autumn rains; when Freya, the goddess of youth and love, went forth over the earth each spring, while the flowers broke forth under her tread over the brown moors, and the birds welcomed her with song; when, according to Olaus Magnus, the Goths and South Swedes had, on the return of spring, a mock battle between summer and winter, and welcomed the returning splendour of the sun with dancing and mutual feasting, rejoicing that a better season for fishing and hunting was approaching? To those simpler children of a simpler age, in more direct contact with the daily and yearly facts of Nature, and more dependent on them for their bodily food and life, winter and spring were the two great facts of existence; the symbols, the one of death, the other of life; and the battle between the two—the battle of the sun with darkness, of winter with spring, of death with life, of bereavement with love—lay at the root of all their myths and all their creeds. Surely a change has come over our fancies. The seasons are little to us now. We are nearly as comfortable in winter as in summer, or in spring. Nay, we have begun, of