The distant and high range that bounds his view makes a sort of veiling,
cutting it off and guarding it from whatever may be beyond. The
succession of lower ranges suggests secluded valleys, and the reiterated
woods, distant and more distant, convey an impression of fertility more
powerful than that of corn in harvest upon the lowlands.
Sometimes it is a whole province that is thus grasped by the eye,
sometimes in the summer haze but a few miles; always this scenery
inspires the onlooker with a sense of completion and of repose, and at
the same time, I think, with worship and with awe.
Now one such group of valleys there was, hill above hill, forest above
forest, and beyond it a great noble range, unwooded and high against
heaven, guarding it, which I for my part knew when first I knew anything
of this world. There is a high place under fir trees, a place of sand
and bracken, in South England whence such a view was always present to
eye in childhood and "There," said I to myself (even in childhood) "a
man should make his habitation." In those valleys is the proper off-set
for man.
And so there was.
It was a little place which had grown up as my county grows. The house
throwing out arms and layers. One room was panelled in the oak of the
seventeenth century--but that had been a novelty in its time, for the
walls upon which the panels stood were of the late fifteenth, oak and
brick intermingled.
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