Il8 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



the range to the stranger, and to the lover of the hill presents 

 that aspect of multiplicity, and yet uniformity, which lends a 

 special charm to this district of England. We are standing on 

 the summit of a level ridge which extends some four miles, 

 stretching to the south-west, and ending abruptly over Sid- 

 mouth, while its other extremity loses itself in the pinewoods 

 and gently-falling " combes " above Honiton. From the vale 

 below, this singular ridge forms the strongest contrast to a 

 Spanish sierra; it resembles rather a long knife-blade, not 

 picturesque save when traversed by atmospheric effects, but 

 striking from being unlike anything else in England. A poet 

 might compare it to a couching lion regarding the fertile valleys 

 below. It is not without 



" The silence and the calm 

 Of mute insensate things," 



while its very uniformity enables memory to reproduce it the 

 more easily afar from the nameless charm of its presence. As 

 the bright spring sunshine travels over its face, notice the wealth 

 of colour which it awakes beside us. The heather shakes its 

 withered white bells over the grey reindeer-moss which carpets 

 the pebbly ground, save where the warmer hues of yellow and 

 brown stones interrupt its continuity, the larger of these bearing 

 many a ruddy or golden rosette of lichen. Then succeeds the 

 whortleberry with its brilliantly red unopened blooms and faint 

 green leaves, and then another blinding wall of furze blossom. 

 Beyond that lies a patch of pale yellow bents, with many flints, 

 white, grey, and red, scattered amongst them ; here runs, per- 

 haps, a trail of ivy ; while there is a cluster of mossy spear- 

 heads, more beautiful, if you look microscopically into them 

 than even the red-stemmed Scotch firs behind us. Each tiny 

 shaft might be made of delicate pink glass, while their golden 

 spear-heads, like those of the insolent Gauls of old, might be 

 defying the skies to fall, and they would bear them up. On 

 the other side of this common, the russet leaves of stunted 



