It was just such a picture as this last
that Hayslope Church had made to the traveller as he began to mount the
gentle slope leading to its pleasant uplands, and now from his station
near the Green he had before him in one view nearly all the other
typical features of this pleasant land. High up against the horizon were
the huge conical masses of hill, like giant mounds intended to fortify
this region of corn and grass against the keen and hungry winds of the
north; not distant enough to be clothed in purple mystery, but with
sombre greenish sides visibly specked with sheep, whose motion was only
revealed by memory, not detected by sight; wooed from day to day by the
changing hours, but responding with no change in themselves--left for
ever grim and sullen after the flush of morning, the winged gleams of
the April noonday, the parting crimson glory of the ripening summer
sun. And directly below them the eye rested on a more advanced line of
hanging woods, divided by bright patches of pasture or furrowed crops,
and not yet deepened into the uniform leafy curtains of high summer, but
still showing the warm tints of the young oak and the tender green of
the ash and lime. Then came the valley, where the woods grew thicker,
as if they had rolled down and hurried together from the patches left
smooth on the slope, that they might take the better care of the tall
mansion which lifted its parapets and sent its faint blue summer smoke
among them.
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