WARWICK WOODLANDS. 99 



rays, aud casting mauy a shadow over the slopes and 

 hollows which diversitled the scene. 



Immediately across the road lay a rich velvet meadow, 

 luxuriant still and green — for the preceding month had 

 been rather wet, and frost had not set in to nip its verdure 

 — sloping down southerly to a broad shallow trout-stream, 

 which rippled all glittering and bright over a pebbly bed, 

 although the margin on the hither side was somewhat 

 swampy, with tufts of willows and bushes of dark alder 

 fringing it here and there, and dipping their branches in 

 its waters — the farther bank was skirted by a tall grove 

 of maple, hickory, and oak, with a thick undergrowth of 

 sumach arrayed in all the gorgeous garniture of autumn, 

 purples and brilliant scarlets and chrome yellows, mixed 

 up and harmonized with the dark copper foliage of a few 

 sere beeches, and the gray trunks apparent here and there 

 through the thin screen of the fast falling leaves. 



Beyond this grove, the bank rose bold and rich in swell- 

 ing curves, with a fine corn-field, topped already to admit 

 every sunbeam to the ripening ears. A buckwheat stubble, 

 conspicuous by its deep ruddy hue, and two or three brown 

 pastures divided by high fences, along the lines of which 

 flourished a copious growth of cat-briers and sumachs, with 

 here and there a goodly tree waving above them, made 

 up the centre of the picture. Beyond this cultured knoll 

 there seemed to be a deep pitch of the land clothed with 

 a hanging wood of heavy timber ; and, above this again, the 

 soil surged upward into a huge and round-topped hill, 

 with several golden stubbles, shining out from the frame- 

 work of primeval forest, which, dark with many a mighty 

 jnne, covered the mountain to the top, except where at 

 its western edge it showed a huge and rifted precipice of 

 rock. 



To the right, looking down the stream, the hills closed 

 in quite to the water's brink on the far side, rough and 

 uncultivated, with many a blue and misty peak discovered 

 through the gaps in their bold, broken outline, and a broad, 

 lake-like sheet, as calm and brightly pictured as a mirror, 

 reflecting their inverted beauties so wondrously distinct 

 and vivid, that the amazed eye might not recognise the 

 parting between reality and shadow. An old gray mill, 

 deeply embosomed in a clump of weeping willows, still 

 verdant, though the woods were sere and waxing leafless. 



