al ground.

When we were weary of discussion, when knowledge palled upon our taste,
we pulled aside the little blue curtain, and gave ourselves up to gazing
upon the picture from the window. I doubt if any part of England is
looked upon with more curious eyes than that lying between Liverpool and
London. It is to so many Americans the first glimpse of strange lands.
Spread out in almost imperceptible furrows were the velvet turfed
meadows, the unclipped hedges a mass of tangled greenness between. For
miles and miles they stretched away, with seldom a road, never a
solitary house. The banks on either side were tufted with broom and
yellow with gorse; the hill-sides in the distance, white with chalk, or
black with the heather that would blossom into purple beauty with the
summer. We rushed beneath arches festooned, as for a gala-day, with
hanging vines. Tiny gardens bloomed beside the track at every station,
and all along the walls, the arched bridges, and every bit of stone upon
the wayside, was a mass of clinging, glistening ivy. Not the half-dead,
straggling thing we tend and shield so carefully at home, with here and
there a leaf put forth for very shame. These, bright, clear-cut,
deep-tinted, crowded and overlapped each other, and ran riot over the
land, transforming the dingy, mildewy cottages, bits of imperishable
ugliness, into things of beauty, if not eternal joys. Not in the least
picturesque or pleasing to the eye were these English villages;
straggling rows of dull red brick houses set amidst the fields--dirty
city children upon a picnic--with a foot square garden before each door,
cared for possibly, possibly neglected. A row of flower-pots upon the
stone ledge of every little window, a row of chimney-pots upon the slate
roof of every dwelling. Sometimes a narrow road twisted and writhed
itself from one to another, edged by high brick walls, hidden beneath a
weight of ivy; sometimes romantic lanes, shaded by old elms, and green
beyond all telling. The towns were much the same,--outgrown villages.
And the glimpse we caught, as we flew by, so far above the roofs often
that we could almost peep down upon the hearths through the chimney
tops, was by no means inviting.

Dusk fell upon us with the smoke, and mist, and drizzling rain of
London, bringing no anxiety; for was there not, through the
thoughtfulness of friends, a place prepared for us? Our pleasant
acquaintance of the golden locks forsook his own boxes,