bleaker by suggested contrast. Even the
waste places by the side of the road were not, as Hawthorne liked to
put it, "taken back to Nature" by any decent covering of vegetation.
Wherever the land had the chance, it seemed to lie fallow. There is a
certain tawny nudity of the South, bare sunburnt plains, coloured like
a lion, and hills clothed only in the blue transparent air; but this
was of another description--this was the nakedness of the North; the
earth seemed to know that it was naked, and was ashamed and cold.[13]

It seemed to be always blowing on that coast. Indeed, this had passed
into the speech of the inhabitants, and they saluted each other when
they met with "Breezy, breezy," instead of the customary "Fine day" of
farther south. These continual winds were not like the harvest breeze,
that just keeps an equable pressure against your face as you walk, and
serves to set all the trees talking over your head, or bring round you
the smell of the wet surface of the country after a shower. They were
of the bitter, hard, persistent sort, that interferes with sight and
respiration, and makes the eyes sore. Even such winds as these have
their own merit in proper time and place. It is pleasant to see them
brandish great masses of shadow. And what a power they have over the
colour of the world! How they ruffle the solid woodlands in their
passage, and make them shudder and whiten like a single willow! There
is nothing more vertiginous than a wind like this among the woods,
with all its sights and noises; and the effect gets between some
painters and their sober eyesight, so that, even when the rest of
their picture is calm, the foliage is coloured like foliage in a
gale.[14] There was nothing, however, of this sort to be noticed in a
country where there were no trees and hardly any shadows, save the
passive shadows and clouds or those of rigid houses and walls. But the
wind was nevertheless an occasion of pleasure; for nowhere could you
taste more fully the pleasure of a sudden lull, or a place of
opportune shelter. The reader knows what I mean; he must remember how,
when he has sat himself down behind a dyke on a hill-side, he
delighted to hear the wind hiss vainly through the crannies at his
back; how his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to dawn
upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was
beautiful, the heather purple, and the faraway hills all marbled with
sun and shadow. Wordsworth,