Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/407

Rh the periodical, "I say, Jones! talk of Araby the Blessed, it isn't worth mention in the same day with ten thousand times more lovely, blessed, dear old England. By George! old chap, I want to look out of both windows at once. I can't see enough of it. I feel as if I could cry, it is so beautiful!"

"Ah! indeed," responded the reader, and down went his head into his paper, and did not look off it again. "Truly," I thought, "what a blessing to publishers that all men have not the sense of beauty; and what a blessing it is to men like myself that we are not addicted to the grotesque."

The descent of the Dart should be made as I made it then, on an early summer evening when the sun is in decline, and the lawns are yellow with buttercups, when the mighty oaks and beeches are casting long shadows, and the reaches of the river are alternately sheets of quivering gold and of purple ink.

As I went down the river, all dissatisfaction at my lot passed away, and by the time Dartmouth came in view I could no longer refrain myself, but threw my cap into the air, and barely caught it from falling overboard as I shouted, "Hurrah for merry England! Verily it has scenes that are unrivalled in the whole world."

Indeed now, in gravity, as I write this, I cannot think that I have ever seen any sight lovelier than Dartmouth on an evening in early summer, with Kingswear opposite, the one bathed in soft sweet shadow, and the other glittering and golden in the sun's declining rays.