The turf in
that place was about eighteen inches higher than the top of
the wall, making a very convenient seat. I thought of Queen
Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh; but I also thought the most
queenly thing I could do was to take the offered civility, and
I sat down. My eyes were bewildered with the beauty; they
turned from one point to another with a sort of wondering,
insatiable enjoyment. There, beneath our feet, lay the little
level green- plain; its roads and trees all before us as in a
map, with the lines of building enclosing it on the south and
west. A cart and oxen were slowly travelling across the road
between the library and the hotel, looking like minute ants
dragging a crumb along. Beyond them was the stretch of brown
earth, where the cavalry exercises forbade a blade of grass to
show itself. And beyond that, at the further edge of the
plain, the little white camp; its straight rows of tents and
the alleys between all clearly marked out. Round all this the
river curved, making a promontory of it; a promontory with
fringed banks, and levelled at top, as it seemed, just to
receive the Military Academy.
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