214 MY DEVON YEAR 



was no sun to light its million lamps of blossom and 

 berry and jewelled leaf. Instead, the sombre tones of 

 the hour found a kindred spirit, ambiently brooding 

 over all, and out from the subdued light of that day a 

 new world emerged — a humble world, a world re- 

 signed, a world that passed peacefully and not un- 

 willingly away to death. Its highest adornment was 

 the ruffled silver of distant waters ; its crown of light, 

 a wan illumination from above, where fans of radiance 

 spread forth through wind -rifts, roamed with revo- 

 lutions over hills and valleys, then vanished into 

 gloom. 



Every earth-picture thus depends upon the sky- 

 picture spread over it, and when the sun is absent, 

 the spacious diffusion of light effected by cloud and 

 humid air will oftentimes beget luminous most beau- 

 tiful conditions, will magnify unconsidered incident of 

 landscape, and reveal chastened colour- harmonies 

 that are lost in the more obvious magnificence of 

 direct sunlight. And upon this, my silver day, the 

 children of sunshine slept. 



From a standpoint on high lands, there spread 

 beneath me a world, there rose above me a sky, 

 wrought in all shades of grey, ranging from hue of 

 pure pearl to that of sombre lead. A foreground 

 of forest fell abruptly away ; plains subtended the 

 foot-hills of these woods, and amidst them wound 

 a river, and rose a little township that climbed 

 here and there to its own proper elevations in the 

 vale. Beyond, the land towered gradually to a 



