78 WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



is a merciful dispensation of Providence that all men do not 

 soe with the same eyes. When, years gone by, we had 

 prisoners of war who were confined at Dartmoor (the con- 

 vict establishment was built for that" purpose), a French 

 writer described it as a terrible Siberia, covered with 

 unmelting snow. 



"When the snows go away," he added, "the mists 

 appear." 



In the desolation of winter Dartmoor is naturally not so 

 pleasant as Torquay or Brighton. In summer, spite of 

 the frequent mist, the Frenchman's description must not be 

 entertained, for then the heather is everywhere abloom ; the 

 graceful ferns fondly sweep the edges of the great grey rock's ; 

 the foot sinks into an elastic velvet pile of moss, herbage, 

 and alpine plants ; the distant coppices catch and hold the 

 shadows of the clouds in the trembling tree-tops ; the 

 colours of earth and sky imperceptibly change and blend 

 morn, noon, and night ; the cuckoo tells and re-tells 



" His name to all the hills ; " 



the peewit, couched in the rushes by the brook, utters its 

 shrill cry at your approach, and tries, with instinctive 

 cunning, to entice you away from its nest ; and there is 

 music in the rarified air, performed by such united choirs as 

 are made by myriads of merry-lived insects, the tinkling of 

 streams, and the half-mournful cadence of many zephyrs 

 journeying over the moors. 



In sceptical mood I have sometimes doubted whether 

 Mrs. Hemans, though she won the prize offered by the 

 Royal Society of Literature for the best poem on Dartmoor, 



