=tx DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLE OF MAN 
of fertility, and its landscape never shows the trim and 
ordered aspect of the most typical English scenery, it is 
a land of ancient settlement and tillage, and there is 
little doubt that the farms of the Norse dominion were 
in many cases identical with those of the present day. 
The superiority of the isle at that time to the waste 
and barren Hebrides, with which it was associated, is 
abundantly indicated in our oldest record, the Chronicon 
Mannie. Though at intervals during the Norse period, 
as doubtless during the unknown preceding centuries of 
Celtic rule, it suffered greatly from the frequent and 
desolating raids and civil strifes, it has, since the advent 
of the Stanleys, early in the fifteenth century, enjoyed 
a peace almost unbroken. This little land, with its 
tender colouring of green, grey, and brown, set in a sea 
softly blue, is of a gentle miniature picturesqueness. 
Within its limits it contains, as will have been gathered 
from the foregoing pages, much diversity of surface. 
Even the barer portions of the tilled land have a 
delicate charm, derived largely from the mild climate 
and abundant moisture; and the loveliness of a green 
northern field with its bordering hedges of dog-rose and 
hawthorn, or of a rough pasture in Santon, whose great 
sod fences are starred in spring with innumerable primroses, 
must be seen to be appreciated. Characteristic also is the 
half-cultured beauty of a hillside farm-steading, whose 
slopes, varied by bright gorse patches and wetter spaces 
of waste, gay with many-coloured blossom, descend from 
the weathered home-buildings, with their scanty surround- 
ing trees, to some sheltered and closely foliaged gill, 
where a bright swift brook hurries amid the brier and ferns. 
Culture has spread far up the hillsides, perhaps as far 
as it can be made remunerative. The best land is probably 
on the northern level and the limestone flats of the south. 
