in the dullest of surroundings that one can find in nature, and he still has the creative vision that belongs to seership. It is this faculty in Hudson for sensing the psychology in the inanimate that attracted the late Professor William James, who quotes at length, from Idle Days in Patagonia, in his Talks to Students. The extract is worth giving, not only for its intrinsic beauty, but as an illustration of Hudson’s method, the mood out of which he creates the vision of an ideal state sparkling and real as that contained in A Crystal Age.
"The intense interest that life can assume," says Professor James, "when brought down to the non-thinking level, the love of pure sensorial perception, has been beautifully described by a man who can write,—Mr. W. H. Hudson,—in his volume, Idle Days in Patagonia.
I spent the greater part of one winter, (says this admirable author), at a point on the Rio Negro, seventy or eighty miles from the sea. . . .
It was my custom to go out every morning on horseback with my gun, and, followed by one dog, to ride away from the valley; and no sooner would I climb the terrace, and plunge into the gray, universal thicket, than I would find myself as
