These Summer Visitations 79 



enough, it ceases to be true. Time makes a 

 castle or abbey in England a piece of the land 

 scape ; time more quickly adopts into its age the 

 barns and houses of our countryside. All out 

 lines close up and tone down and soften, till a 

 stone wall or a rail fence becomes as much a part 

 of the landscape as the original rocks or the trees 

 from which the fence-rails were made. And the 

 old houses, when they were raised in the human 

 pride of their possessors they were intrusive, no 

 doubt ; but now they take their place with dignity 

 as children by adoption. In this there is an 

 analogue of the whole course of Nature; and 

 rightly, for all things are in the scope of the 

 infinite life which pervades all that man is or 

 does, all that this earth or the universes are and 

 do, which &quot; fills and bounds, connects and equals 

 all.&quot; 



