Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/142

 than the gratification of ennui or caprice. Alert, and impetuous, and persevering, it even from its infancy dashed onward, proud and resolute; and no sooner met with a rebuff from the rocks on one side of the Glen, than it flew indignant to the other, frequently awakening the sleeping echoes, by the noise of its wild career. Its complexion was untinged by the fat of the soil; for in truth the soil had no fat to throw away. But little as it owed to nature, and still less as it was indebted to cultivation, it had clothed itself in many shades of verdure. The hazel, the birch, and the mountain-ash, were not only scattered in profusion through the bottom, but in many places clomb to the very tops of the hills. The meadows and corn-fields, indeed, seemed very evidently to have been encroachments made by stealth on the sylvan reign: for none had their outlines marked with the mathematical precisiou, in which the modern improver so much delights. Not a straight line was