They are built
chiefly of good gray stone, and thatched; though I see that within the
last year or two the red-brick cottages are multiplying, for the Vale is
beginning to manufacture largely both bricks and tiles. There are lots
of waste ground by the side of the roads in every village, amounting
often to village greens, where feed the pigs and ganders of the people;
and these roads are old-fashioned, homely roads, very dirty and badly
made, and hardly endurable in winter, but still pleasant jog-trot roads
running through the great pasture-lands, dotted here and there with
little clumps of thorns, where the sleek kine are feeding, with no fence
on either side of them, and a gate at the end of each field, which makes
you get out of your gig (if you keep one), and gives you a chance of
looking about you every quarter of a mile.
One of the moralists whom we sat under in our youth--was it the great
Richard Swiveller, or Mr. Stiggins--says, "We are born in a vale, and
must take the consequences of being found in such a situation." These
consequences I, for one, am ready to encounter. I pity people who
weren't born in a vale. I don't mean a flat country; but a vale--that
is, a flat country bounded by hills. The having your hill always in view
if you choose to turn towards him--that's the essence of a vale. There
he is for ever in the distance, your friend and companion.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25