nd to look farther, and away yonder was a farm-house at the foot of
a hill. Pale yellow stubble covered the hill, rising like a
background to the red-tile roof, and to the elms beside the house,
among whose branches there were pale yellow spots. Round wheat-ricks
stood in a double row on the left hand--count them, and you counted
the coin of the land, bank-notes in straw--and on the right and in
front were green meads, and horses feeding--horses who had done good
work in plough-time and harvest-time, and would soon be at plough
again. There were green meads, because some green meads are a
necessity of an English farm-house, and there are few without them,
even when in the midst of corn. Meads in which the horses feed, a
pony for the children and for the pony-cart, turkeys, two or three
cows--all the large and small creatures that live about the place.
When the land was torn up and ploughed for corn of old time, these
green enclosures were left to stay on, till now it seems as if
pressure of low prices for wheat would cause the corn-land to again
become pasture. Of old time, golden wheat conquered and held
possession, and now the grass threatens to oust the conqueror.

Had anyone studied either of these three--the great elms in the
Out-park, or the thin twisted screen of hedge, or the red-tile roof,
and the yellow stubble behind it on the hill--he might have found
material for a picture in each. There was, in truth, in each far
more than anyone could put into a picture, or than anyone could put
into a book; for the painter can but give one aspect of one day, and
the writer a mere catalogue of things; but Nature refreshes the
reality every day with different tints, and as it were new ideas, so
that, although it is always there, it is never twice the same. Over
that stubble on the hill there were other hills, and among these a
combe or valley, in which stood just such another farm-house, but
differently placed, with few trees, and those low, somewhat bare in
its immediate surroundings, but above, on each side, close at hand,
sloping ramparts of green turf rising high, till the larks that sang
above seemed to sing in another land, like that found by Jack when
he clomb the beanstalk. Along this combe was a cover of gorse, and
in spring there was a mile of golden bloom, richer than gold in
colour, leading like a broad highway of gold down to the house. From
those ramparts in high summer--which is when the corn is ripe and
th