PREFACE. THE Country Notes presented to the reader in this volume were written at the several places and upon the successive dates which are superscribed. They record, therefore, not afterthoughts, but immediate impressions and such moods of mind, whether transient or permanent, as were actually induced by the scenes portrayed. As will be observed, the greater part of them have reference to a garden situated in an ancient parish on the south-eastern side of Lancashire. Although this parish or township is already threatened on one of its borders by the fast-approaching outworks of a great city, it retains some nooks of sylvan greenness, and a few places where rural quiet and comparative seclusion still remain. Like that parish in which Chaucer's good parson laboured, it might even yet be fitly described as 'wide,' with 'houses fer asondur.' Of the garden itself it may be said that it possesses no especial advantages either of soil or of climate; but it is large and old-extending over several acres and having considerable variety in the shape of wood and water, orchard and lawn, dingle and meadow. The reader who cares to know anything of the adjacent country-which is not usually thought to be attractive-will find it described in some of the later Notes, and particularly in those headed 'The Glen,' 'The Clough,' and 'The Moss.' It would have been better, perhaps, if these could have appeared in the earlier pages; but, having been written at special seasons, the arrangement, of the book required that they should remain where they now are. To make the repetition of places and dates unnecessary, it may be explained here that the year referred to throughout is that of 1878; and that where no locality is given, the writer's own homestead and garden at Moston are to be inferred. A word of explanation, and, in some sense, of apology, may be added with reference to the nume rous quotations in this book. The reader is asked to regard them not as excrescences, nor even as extraneous gems selected for the enrichment of the text, but as something correlative with, and indeed essential to, the idea and plan of that which has been attempted. It has been the writer's habit to associate certain passages of literature with certain scenes of natural beauty, or with particular phases of country life, in such an intimate way that the pleasure given by the one was in no small degree dependent upon the existence and recognition of the other; and as the writer's chief object has been to convey to the reader as completely as possible the delight which he himself felt, it became not only desirable, but necessary, to insert such passages as were already connected in his own mind with the things described. It remains only to say that the division of the work into months and weeks will facilitate its use as a Year-book of rural seasons; and that it is hoped it will, at least, show how far it is possible, even in the neighbourhood of a large town, to study the common aspects of Nature, and to interest the circle of a family in the simple |