He is also ready to write another book. This time it is to be a series of "short story-sketches of life and character, incident and nature. I want to express the deeper feelings with which observation of life-histories has filled me, and I assure you I have as large a collection of these facts and incidents--the natural history of the heart--as I have ever written about birds and trees." In short, he proposes to write a series which shall take the place in the magazine of the novel, and says that he has enough material to carry him along until the year 1890, or longer. "Why not let other contributors, besides the novelist, occasionally give you a series? For myself, I have given up English novels and taken to the French, which are at least bright, short, dramatic, and amusing." The poor English novelist! He has to endure a great deal. Whenever an editor is in want of a subject for a leading article, or a critic for something to talk about, he has a fling at the English novelist. The greatest artist and the smallest, most insignificant story-teller; the master and the apprentice; the observer of manners and the school-girl--all are lumped together by the critic who has nothing else to write about, and discussed under the title of "the English Novelist." And to think that Jefferies--Richard Jefferies--should throw his stone! Oh! 'tis too much! But Nemesis fell upon him, for he presently wrote "Green Ferne Farm," which is neither short, bright, dramatic, nor amusing. That proposed series did not appear. He says, a few days afterwards, that he has begun a paper asked for by Mr. Longman on "The County Suffrage." This paper subsequently appeared under the title of "After the County Suffrage." It was in June, 1883, that _Longman's Magazine_ contained the article called "The Pageant of Summer." This fine paper, the best thing ever written by Jefferies, glorified the whole of that number. There has never been, I think, in any magazine any article like unto it, so splendid in imagery and language, so perfectly truthful, so overflowing with observation, so full of the deepest feeling, so tender and so touching, so generous of thought and suggestion. In this paper Jefferies reached his highest point. There are plenty of single pages and detached passages in which he has equalled the "Pageant of Summer;" but there is no one chapter, no single article, in which he has sustained throughout the elevation of this noble paper. I will return to "The Pageant of Summer" later on.