§ 15. THE WREKIN. 



773 



and traversed by many a winding walk, skilfully designed to lay open 

 every beauty of the place, and he will have no very inadequate idea of 

 the ' British Tempe,' sung by Thomson. We find its loveliness 

 compounded of two simple geological elements, — that abrupt and 

 varied picturesqueness for which the trap rocks are so famous, and 

 which may be seen so strikingly illustrated in the neighbourhood of 

 Edinburgh ; and that soft-lined and level beauty — an exquisite com- 

 ponent of landscape when it does not stand too much alone — so charac- 

 teristic, in many localities, of the New Ked- sandstone formation. 

 From the hill-top,* the far Welsh Mountains, though lessened in the 

 distance to a mere azure ripple, that but barely roughens the line of 

 the horizon, were as distinctly defined in the clear atmosphere, as the 

 green luxuriant leafage in the foreground which harmonized so exqui- 

 sitely with their blue. The line extended from far beyond the Shrop- 

 shire Wrekin, on the right, to far beyond the Worcestershire Malverns, 

 on the left. In the foreground we have the undulating trap ; next 

 succeeds an extended plain of the richly-cultivated New Red-sand- 

 stone, which, occupying fully two-thirds of the entire landscape, forms 

 the whole of what a painter would term its middle ground. Then 

 rises over this plain, in the distance, a ridgy acclivity, much fretted 

 by inequalities, composed of the Old Red-sandstone formation, cohe- 

 rent enough to have resisted those denuding agencies by which the 

 softer deposits have been worn down ; while the distant sea of blue 

 hills, that seems as if toppling over it, has been scooped out of the 

 Upper and Lower Silurian formations, and demonstrates in its com- 

 manding altitude and bold wavy outline, the still greater solidity of 

 the materials which compose it." f 



15. The Wrekin. — The Dudley coal-field is remark- 

 able for the beds of volcanic grit intercalated between the 

 upper strata of the coal-measures and the lowermost 

 triassic deposits ; and which Sir R. Murchison is of opinion 

 were formed from the detritus of submarine voleanos, which 

 were in activity towards the close of the carboniferous 

 epoch.f The solid intrusive trap rocks are of a later date, 



* The eminence so glowingly described by Thomson : — 

 " Meanwhile you gain the top from whose fair brow 

 The bursting prospect spreads immense around," &c, 



f First Impressions of England and its People, by Hugh Miller ; 

 London, 1847, p. 111. 

 % Silurian System, p. 468. 



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