Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/232

 diversified with hill, dale, and water) is a finer one than English scenery, which is apt, though soft and rich, to be somewhat tame, usually furnishes. When this view first opened upon me, the effect of the various colours presented by wood-land, pasture, and ploughed land, joined to the very slight haze, or frost fog, in the atmosphere, natural to a day in December, was as if I had come suddenly upon a bay with the sea immediately beneath me. As I began to descend, however, the illusion was gradually dispelled, and I beheld a scene which at a more favourable time of the year I felt must be one of great natural beauty, and must have presented a fine specimen of an English village, at least as far as regards the picturesque, for the village in question was so scattered that it might be almost said to be co-extensive with the parish in which it was situated —a circumstance which may add much to the picturesqueness, without, as appeared in this instance, adding anything to the prosperity of a village.

Sir Walter Scott in Waverley, in his description of the hamlet of Tully-Veolan, says: "The houses seemed miserable in the extreme, especially to an eye accustomed to the smiling neatness of English cottages." Alas! either "the smiling neatness of