shudder with the
fear that I am going to give you pages of description of scenery? It is
not a SHUDDER with me when I get a landscape-letter; it is merely that
leaden dulness which falls upon the spirit when it is confronted with
statements which produce no impression upon the mind. I always, for
instance, skip the letters of travel which appear about the third
chapter of great biographies, when the young gentleman goes for the
Grand Tour after taking his degree.

But imagine this: a great, rich, wooded, watered plain; on the far
horizon the shadowy forms of hills; behind you, gently rising heights,
with dingles and folds full of copsewood, rising to soft green downs.
There, on the skirts of the upland, above the plain, below the hill,
sits the little village, with a stately Perpendicular church tower. The
village itself of stone houses, no two alike, all with character;
gabled, mullioned, weathered to a delicate ochre--some standing back,
some on the street. Intermingled with these are fine Georgian houses,
with great pilasters, all of stone too; in the centre of the street a
wall, with two tall gate-posts, crowned with stone balls; a short lime
avenue leads to a stately, gabled manor-house, which you can see
through great iron gates. The whole scene incredibly romantic,
exquisitely beautiful.

My favourite walk is this. I leave the little town by a road which
winds along the base of the hill. I pass round a shoulder, wooded and
covered to the base with tangled thickets, where the birds sing
shrilly. I turn up to the left into a kind of "combe." At the very
farthest end of the little valley, at the base of the steeper slopes
but now high above the plain, stands an ancient church among yews. On
one side of it is a long, low-fronted, irregular manor-house, with a
formal garden in front, approached by a little arched gate-house which
stands on the road; on the other side of the church, and below it, a no
less ancient rectory, with a large Perpendicular window, anciently a
chapel, in the gable. In the warm, sheltered air the laurels grow
luxuriantly; a bickering stream, running in a deep channel, makes a
delicate music of its own; a little farther on stands a farm, with barn
and byre; in the midst of the buildings is a high, stone-tiled
dovecote. The roo-hooing of the pigeons fills the whole place with a
slumberous sound. I wind up the hill by a little path, now among
thickets, now crossing a tilted pasture. I emerge on