HARMONY IN SILVER 215 



northern horizon, where the southern ramparts of 

 Dartmoor, grey as rain, heaved hugely up against 

 the sky-line. 



Plane upon plane the scene extended, and the 

 operations of man lent no little beauty, where upon 

 the fertile lands, that had carried garnered harvests 

 and were now naked, there rose from faint con- 

 stellations of flame many smoke -wreaths, spreading 

 on the wind in trails easterly. They were almost 

 white at the point of birth, where, from root and 

 weed, gathered off the broken stubbles, they rose 

 above a hundred dotted fires, and sinuously wound 

 away ; then fading to diaphanous hazes, they threw 

 up cot and hedgerow, tall elm and hamlet, against 

 their veils of light. Here, in some wide gap or 

 gorge, the western wind caught these smoky ribbons, 

 and fretted them steadily and swiftly away ; else- 

 where, sheltered by hanging woods or the configura- 

 tion of the land, they trailed peacefully, in wisps and 

 wreaths of ashy illumination, or hung over the hamlets 

 in persistent clouds, whose iron-blue banners told of 

 burning wood on many a hearth, 



I think this spectacle of mist-laden air, high hills, 

 and widespread plains lacked no shade of all those 

 that pertain to the mingling of black with white. 

 From the purity of sky-rifts, where a rain of colour- 

 less light winnowed the clouds, yet never exceeded 

 the brilliance of frosted silver, to the darkest shadows 

 of adjacent pines, the solemn scheme obtained. It 

 was manifest alike in the curtain of the Moor, 



