On England’s pleasant pastures seen

THE poets may praise the mellow mists, but what is special about October for real ruralists are the vital, exhilarating mornings, with the sky so wind-wiped clean of cloud you can see clear into the stratosphere. And then the Holy Trinity of smells on the frosted-edged air: rotting leaves, bonfires and gunpowder from Eley cartridges. All of these are a sort of incense.

There is only one place to be in autumn and that is in the country—and, within that geography, in the classic landscape of field and hedge, brook and copse.

For years now, I have been engaged