Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/195

Rh alone. Thus I would suggest to any one who goes out from Birmingham or other large town to visit The Black Country, to go on, after he has seen its salient features, to the Green Border-Land beyond, and he will find several watch-towers of Nature planted at convenient distances around the iron district, as if on purpose to show the brightest, happiest, heavenliest of her sceneries in contrast with the huge swart industries of man. There are several of these eminences which furnish such points of observation, especially the Clent and Lickey Hills, which look off into vistas of rural life and beauty embellished with all the golden and emerald jewellery of the spring and summer's setting.

But there is a hill more famous still for its height, position, history, and scenery; a kind of, which, if it does not overlook a Jordan, yet commands the view of a more picturesque river, or the Severn, with the little meandering Canaan through which it runs. This is "The Wrekin," the centre and cynosure of Shropshire's social life—the Auld Reckie of the county toasts. Never a hill outside of Judea had such a social status and attraction. To "All Friends round the Wrekin" is a toast and a saying full of pleasant associations and suggestions. It sounds like "All the folks at home," and has a kind of common hearth-stone ring to it. I had intended to make this famous