72 "Mature Studies in Berkshire. 



spect, north, east, and south, was a very dream of 

 beauty Above, the creamy clouds were sailing 

 down a clear blue sky before the fresh wind of the 

 north, and below, the shadows were chasing one 

 another over the farms and villages of fair Berkshire. 

 Such a landscape one sees this side the sea only in 

 New England ; and only in Old England on the other. 

 It is the landscape made possible by generations 

 of patient toil, the result of many ploughings and 

 reapings, much seedtime and harvest, smoothing the 

 rough earth into comely beauty, trimming down the 

 asperities of the forest, piling the meadow stones 

 into those ramparts which are the sign of the in- 

 dustry by which man has made the unremunerative 

 earth into prosperity. It is such scenery as man has 

 had a share in creating. It is the token of his vic- 

 tory over the lower world. 



Here are the clustered houses of half a dozen vil- 

 lages and towns, each, with its church-spire, like a 

 lifted finger in testimony of the ideals which have 

 inspired this toil and led up to this visible result. 

 Here are the outlying farmhouses, nested each in its 

 clump of trees, whence so much energy, intelligence, 

 and moral impulse have flowed into the life of Mas- 

 sachusetts and of the nation. Here, too, the yellow 

 rye-fields, the green acres of the ripening oats, the 

 meadows from which the busy clatter of the mowing- 

 machine rises to the ear, all tell a story of prosperity 

 still unchecked and country life still bestowing indus- 

 trious and thrifty effort on the land. 



