Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/207

Rh but of reflection, commanding landscapes of wonderful extent and variety and scenes of historical interest dotting, like diversely-tinted fields, the checkered expanse of eighteen centuries. As the eye passes from one feature to another of the great valley, so the mind passes from scene to scene and fact to fact in the histories of the land that have been enacted in that space. It does not require an exuberant imagination for the thought to pass from the Roman, sentinel pacing the wall of Uriconium in the moonlight, to Falstaff swaggering from the battle-field at Shrewsbury into the tent of Prince "Hal" with the dead Hotspur on his back. You need not think of common sense or its hum-drum dictates, if you really listen with attentive and expectant faculties for "Shrewsbury clock" striking Falstaff's "long hour." There is that famous old city itself standing with its brave, tall steeples half-melted in the mist, with the Severn folding it clear around the waste with its arm, as if it were the very bride of its love. All the space between, and up and down the valley is dotted with centres of historical and industrial interest interspersed with the varied aspects of the landscape. It would be almost irreverent to blend them promiscuously. But they have done it themselves. Yonder is the little village of Acton Burnell where Edward I held his parliament in quarters which might reconcile