The was at them I sat on a bench an' looked about 



Cha U rm ain mC ' Naethin g but hills ' hills > hills : hills an ' 

 black gloom an' that awfu' silence. An' there 



was a burd — a whaup we ca' it in the south- 

 lands — which fair shook my mind. It went 

 lamentin' like a grave-bell, an' I heard it long 

 after it was out o' sicht. Then there wasn't 

 another sound. Na, na, wark or no wark, I'm 

 awa' south." 



And so the wayfarer set foot to the white 

 road again, the south spelling home and human 

 solace to him. Those dreary coal-lands, where 

 the green grass is wan and the thorn hedge 

 sombre, and any wandering water illucid and 

 defiled, those hideous heaps of ' shag,' those 

 gaunt mine-chimneys, those squalid hamlets 

 in a populous desolation — these meant ' human 

 comfort ' to him. Or, if they did not, at least 

 they gave him somewhat which the mountain 

 silence denied, which the gathered hills with- 

 held, which the moorland solitudes overbore 

 and refuted. 



An extreme case, no doubt. But the deep 

 disquietude of hill silence, of the mountain 

 solitude, is felt by most habitual dwellers in 

 towns and thronged communities. There is 

 no mountain charm for these except the 

 charm of release, of holiday, of novelty, of 

 an imagined delight, of contrast, of unwonted 



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