"The sun had not yet stood out from the orient, but his precedent light shone through the translucent blue. Yet it was not blue, nor is there any word, nor is a word possible to convey the feeling unless one could be built up of signs and symbols like those in the book of the magician, which glowed and burned to and fro the page. For the blue of the precious sapphire is thick to it, the turquoise dull: these hard surfaces are no more to be compared to it than sand and gravel. They are but stones, hard, cold, pitiful: that which gives them their lustre is the light. Through delicate porcelain sometimes the light comes, and it is not the porcelain, it is the light that is lovely. But porcelain is clay, and the light is shorn, checked, and shrunken. Down through the beauteous azure came the Light itself, pure, unreflected Light, untouched, untarnished even by the dew-sweetened petal of a flower, descending, flowing like a wind, a wind of glory sweeping through the blue. A luminous purple glowing as Love glows in the cheek, so glowed the passion of the heavens. "Two things only reach the soul. By touch there is indeed emotion. But the light in the eye, the sound of the voice! the soul trembles and like a flame leaps to meet them. So to the luminous purple azure his heart ascended." In "Wood Magic" Jefferies carries on the story of "Bevis" and of "Guido." The creatures all talk to the boy, which makes going into the fields and woods a much more delightful thing than it is to other boys, to whom they will not address one single word. There is a wicked weasel, for instance, caught in a gin, who tells such abominable lies as one may expect from a weasel. There is also a fable about a magpie and a jay, which fails, somehow, to arrest the reader. But when you have got through the business with the creatures--I do not care in the least for them unless Bevis is with them--you presently arrive at a most delightful chapter where Bevis is instructed by the wind. It is such a wise, wise wind, it knows so much. If Bevis will only remember the half of what the wind has taught him! "'Bevis, my love, if you want to know all about the sun, and the stars, and everything, make haste and come to me, and I will tell you, dear. In the morning, dear, get up as quick as you can, and drink me as I come down from the hill. In the day go up on the hill, dear, and drink me again, and stay there if you can till the stars shine out, and drink still more of me.