66 A Walk from 



it for Bardfield. Having made six miles extra between 

 the two points, I resumed my walk after a short delay 

 at the latter. 



The weather was glorious. A cloudless sun shone 

 upon a little sky-crystalled world of beauty, smaller in 

 every dimension than you ever see in America. And 

 this is a feature of English scenery that will strike the 

 American traveller most impressively at the first glance, 

 whether he looks at it by night or day. It is not that 

 Nature, in adjusting the symmetries of her scenic struc- 

 tures, nicely apportions the skyscape to the landscape of 

 a country merely for artistic effect. It is not because 

 the island of Great Britain is so small in circumference 

 that the sky is proportioned to it, as the crystal is to 

 the dial of a watch ; that it is so apparently low ; that 

 the stars it holds to its moist, blue bosom are so near at 

 midnight, and the sun so large at noon. It comes, 

 doubtless, from that constant humidity of the atmo- 

 sphere which distinguishes the climate of England, and 

 gives to both land and sky an aspect which is quite 

 unknown to our great western continent. An Ameri- 

 can, after having habituated himself to this aspect, on 

 returning to his own country, will be almost surprised 

 at a feature of its scenery which he never noticed before. 

 He will be struck at the loftiness of the sky ; at the 

 vividness of its blue and gold, the sharp, unsoftened, 



