VI. 



WITH THE NIGHTINGALES AT THE 

 VICARAGE. 



THE parish in which I 

 reside is not one that 

 presents much striking 

 variety of scenery, 

 though it is rich here 

 and there in by-ways, 

 in umbrageous greeny 

 nooks, and its hedge- 

 rows are delightful. 

 Not a right-of-way 

 through the smallest farm but you come on "nestling 

 places green, for poets made," as Leigh Hunt has it, 

 in little strips of coppice or woodland, that run like 

 a rich trimming round a plain solid dress of fairest 

 colours. 



One little dell I have in my eye, where all is so 

 nicely bright, yet shaded, that you might fancy naiads 

 or sylphs at play among the lush leafage ; where, while 

 the ear is charmed with the soft ripple of water, hardly 

 distinguishable from the whispering of the leaves, you 

 can look through the sheltering screen at the distant 

 water-mill, and beyond it the little church-tower — 



the only things that suggest human activity within 



135 



