ith, I may say that Upton Knoll, where I am
writing, stands on the steep edge of a spur of the Cotteswold
Hills, three and a half miles south of Gloucester. Looking
north, we have before us the great vale, or rather plain,
of the Severn, bounded on the right by the main chain of the
Cotteswolds, rising to just over one thousand feet; and on
the left by the hills of Herefordshire, and the beautiful
blue peaks of the Malverns; these last being by far the most
striking feature in the landscape, rising as they do in a
sharp serrated line abruptly from the plain below. They are
about ten miles in length, and the highest point, the Worcestershire
Beacon, is some fourteen hundred feet above the sea. It is
the spot alluded to in Macaulay's lines on the Armada--

Till twelve fair counties saw the blaze on Malvern's lonely
height;

and two hundred years before the Armada it was on "Malvern
hulles" that William Langland "forwandered" till he fell asleep
and dreamed his fiery "Vision of Piers Plowman"--

In a somere season, when softe was the sonne

when, looking "esteward, after the sonne" he beheld a castle
on Bredon Hill

Truth was ther-ynne

and this great plain, that to him symbolized the world.

A fair feld ful of folke fonde ich ther bytwyne;
Alle manere of men; the meme and the ryche.

Now, in the afternoon light, we can see the towns of Great
and North Malvern, and Malvern Wells, nestling at foot of
the steep slant; and eight miles to the right, but over thirty
from where we stand, the cathedral tower of Worcester. The
whole plain is one sea of woods with towers and steeples glinting
from every part of it; notably Tewkesbury Abbey, which shines
white in the sunlight some fourteen miles from us. Nearer,
and to the right, Cheltenham stretches out under Cleeve Hill,
the highest of the Cotteswolds; and to the left Gloucester,
with its Cathedral dwarfing all the buildings round it. This
wooded plain before us dies away in the north into two of
the great Forests of ancient Britain; Wyre, on the left, from
which Worcester takes its name; and Feckenham, on the right,
with Droitwich as its present centre. Everywhere through
this area we come upon beautiful old timber-framed houses
of the Tudor time or earlier; Roman of origin, and still met
with in towns the Romans garrisoned, such as Chester and Gloucester,
though they have modernized their roofs, and changed their
diamond window panes for squares,