A LAND OF PEACE. 117 



a land that had never seen strife. Indeed, I think 

 that the peculiar, indescribable air of security that 

 belongs to an English landscape may be in part owing 

 to the happy circumstance, that for centuries her soil 

 has not known the horrid devastations of war. She 

 may be described in the graphic terms which the 

 prophet uses to express the peaceful fearlessness of the 

 land of Israel in the day when the haughty Gog shall 

 come up against it, a " land of unwalled villages ;" 

 " them that are at rest, that dwell confidently [man/.], 

 all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither 

 bars nor gates" (Ezek. xxxviii. 11). 



The sight of yonder homestead, peeping from among 

 its surrounding trees of deepest, massiest foliage, put 

 this into my mind. The white buildings just indi- 

 cated, rather than shewn, nestling in their bower of 

 verdure, have such an air of peacefulness ! Well, 

 that fills the bottom of the valley. Then before us 

 and around is a wide amphitheatre of country, 

 chequered with fields of all shapes, of all shades of 

 green, from the dark corn just up, to the emerald hue 

 of the young grass, or the yellow flush of thousands of 

 newly-opened buttercups ; and of all shades of brown, 

 some rich and red, where just ploughed, others gray- 

 ish with the sprinkling of lime that has been cast over 

 them. The column of white smoke that curls upward 

 from the corner of yonder ploughed field, and falls 

 obliquely away in transparent haze, where the peasant 

 is burning the noxious couch-grass, adds to the quiet 

 dreaminess of the scene. The projecting tors on the 



