es built on
its banks. The air is dim and lightless with the smoke from all these
habitations and places of business. The soil in the valley (or "bottom,"
to use the local term) is rich; but, as the road begins to ascend, the
vegetation becomes poorer; it does not flourish, it merely exists; and,
instead of trees, there are only bushes and shrubs about the dwellings.
Stone dykes are everywhere used in place of hedges; and what crops there
are, on the patches of arable land, consist of pale, hungry-looking, grey
green oats. Right before the traveller on this road rises Haworth
village; he can see it for two miles before he arrives, for it is
situated on the side of a pretty steep hill, with a back-ground of dun
and purple moors, rising and sweeping away yet higher than the church,
which is built at the very summit of the long narrow street. All round
the horizon there is this same line of sinuous wave-like hills; the
scoops into which they fall only revealing other hills beyond, of similar
colour and shape, crowned with wild, bleak moors--grand, from the ideas
of solitude and loneliness which they suggest, or oppressive from the
feeling which they give of being pent-up by some monotonous and
illimitable barrier, according to the mood of mind in which the spectator
may be.

For a short distance the road appears to turn away from Haworth, as it
winds round the base of the shoulder of a hill; but then it crosses a
bridge over the "beck," and the ascent through the village begins. The
flag-stones with which it is paved are placed end-ways, in order to give
a better hold to the horses' feet; and, even with this help, they seem to
be in constant danger of slipping backwards. The old stone houses are
high compared to the width of the street, which makes an abrupt turn
before reaching the more level ground at the head of the village, so that
the steep aspect of the place, in one part, is almost like that of a
wall. But this surmounted, the church lies a little off the main road on
the left; a hundred yards, or so, and the driver relaxes his care, and
the horse breathes more easily, as they pass into the quite little by-
street that leads to Haworth Parsonage. The churchyard is on one side of
this lane, the school-house and the sexton's dwelling (where the curates
formerly lodged) on the other.

The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing down upon the
church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, and belfrie