her delighted husband.

And as I heard the song of the gondoliers as they went their way--the
song dying away in the distance as the shadows of the sundown closed
around me--I felt that they were singing the requiem of the only love
that had ever entered my heart.

THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER OF OXNEY COLNE

By Anthony Trollope

(_London Review_, 2 March 1861)

The prettiest scenery in all England--and if I am contradicted in that
assertion, I will say in all Europe--is in Devonshire, on the southern
and southeastern skirts of Dartmoor, where the rivers Dart and Avon and
Teign form themselves, and where the broken moor is half cultivated, and
the wild-looking uplands fields are half moor. In making this assertion
I am often met with much doubt, but it is by persons who do not really
know the locality. Men and women talk to me on the matter who have
travelled down the line of railway from Exeter to Plymouth, who have
spent a fortnight at Torquay, and perhaps made an excursion from
Tavistock to the convict prison on Dartmoor. But who knows the glories
of Chagford? Who has walked through the parish of Manaton? Who is
conversant with Lustleigh Cleeves and Withycombe in the moor? Who has
explored Holne Chase? Gentle reader, believe me that you will be rash in
contradicting me unless you have done these things.

There or thereabouts--I will not say by the waters of which little river
it is washed--is the parish of Oxney Colne. And for those who would wish
to see all the beauties of this lovely country a sojourn in Oxney Colne
would be most desirable, seeing that the sojourner would then be brought
nearer to all that he would delight to visit, than at any other spot in
the country. But there is an objection to any such arrangement. There
are only two decent houses in the whole parish, and these are--or were
when I knew the locality--small and fully occupied by their possessors.
The larger and better is the parsonage in which lived the parson and his
daughter; and the smaller is the freehold residence of a certain Miss Le
Smyrger, who owned a farm of a hundred acres which was rented by one
Farmer Cloysey, and who also possessed some thirty acres round her own
house which she managed herself, regarding herself to be quite as great
in cream as Mr. Cloysey, and altogether superior to him in the article of
cider. 'But yeu has to pay no rent, Miss,' Farmer Cloysey would say, when
Miss Le Smyrger expressed this opinion of he