25 MAY 1951, Page 13

COUNTRY LIFE

CHARLES KfNGSLEY must have been either mad or wicked, that he could write a poem in praise of the North-East Wind. Only a mood of masochism could have driven him to it. Week after week passes, and still we arc dried, fretted, chilled by this scourge It is a miracle that life advances at all, and to see summer, hand raised at the threshold of our northern world, waiting to knock and enter, is something to marvel at. Beauty is a presence that will not be denied, no matter how adverse the conditions.