Gradually the people whom I passed began to look
more and more rural, and more toil-worn and ill-fed. The houses ended,
cattle-yards and farm-buildings appeared; and right and left, far away,
spread the low rolling sheet of green meadows and cornfields. Oh, the joy!
The lawns with their high elms and firs, the green hedgerows, the delicate
hue and scent of the fresh clover-fields, the steep clay banks where I
stopped to pick nosegays of wild flowers, and became again a child,--and
then recollected my mother, and a walk with her on the river bank towards
the Red House--and hurried on again, but could not be unhappy, while my
eyes ranged free, for the first time in my life, over the chequered squares
of cultivation, over glittering brooks, and hills quivering in the green
haze, while above hung the skylarks, pouring out their souls in melody.
And then, as the sun grew hot, and the larks dropped one by one into the
growing corn, the new delight of the blessed silence! I listened to the
stillness; for noise had been my native element; I had become in London
quite unconscious of the ceaseless roar of the human sea, casting up mire
and dirt.
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