110 A KAMBLE TO BRANDY COVE. 



May, one can scarcely admit, when one looks abroad, 

 that it does lack anything. These rounded hills, 

 covered as they are with tnrf, so smooth, and of such 

 a tender green, are beautiful in their broad slopes and 

 convexities ; and the differences of light and shadow, 

 and of atmospheric tint, as the sun's rays fall vary- 

 ingly upon them, and as they are now relieved against 

 the cloud-mottled azure of the sky, now recede behind 

 a prominent mass, with a curving valley between, 

 effectually preclude anything like a wearisome uni- 

 formity. Then there are the thickets of furze, sitting 

 like dark crowns upon their summits, and groves of 

 young oak and ash here and there in the bottoms, 

 now arrayed in the freshness of new clothes a livery 

 of a richer and deeper hue than that of the grass, 

 though yet of a 'tint which has a lively brightness 

 peculiar to a week or two at this season; and the 

 fruit-trees of the orchards, whose blossoming glories 

 have just yielded to full foliage ; and the luxuriant 

 vegetation of the gardens ; the young peas and beans 

 and potatoes ; and above all, the hedgerows : all this 

 gives such a variety of tint, that one forgets in the 

 fulness of admiration that there is but one colour dis- 

 playing many shades. Surely there is no other colour 

 that could so charm the eye as green; none that could 

 bear to be spread over almost all nature ; none that 

 we could look upon so continually, in all sorts of 

 shades, not only without weariness, but with ever-new 

 delight and refreshment. The conventionalism of 

 art puts a sort of taboo on the tint in painting ; but 



