Suddenly, as we stood watching, a breeze
from the eastward dived into the basin of the bay, swept the clouds
out, packed them together, rolled them over each other, and hurled
them into the air miles high in one Cordillera of snowy mountains,
sailing slowly out into the Atlantic; and behold, instead of the
chaos of mist, the whole amphitheatre of cliffs, with their gay green
woods and spots of bright red marl and cold black ironstone, and the
gleaming white sands of Braunton, and the hills of Exmoor bathed in
sunshine, so near and clear we almost fancied we could see the pink
heather-hue upon them; and the bay one vast rainbow, ten miles of
flame-colour and purple, emerald and ultramarine, flecked with a
thousand spots of flying snow. No one knows what gigantic effects of
colour even our temperate zone can show, till they have been in
Devonshire and Cornwall; and last, but not least, in Ireland--the
Emerald Isle, in truth. No stay-at-home knows the colour of the sea
till he has seen the West of England; and no one, either stay-at-home
or traveller, I suspect, knows what the colour of a green field can
be till he has seen it among the magic smiles and tears of an Irish
summer shower in county Down.
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