The cherries, red and
black, gleamed like countless eyes among the cool leaves. There was a
little church on the lawn that looked like a pigeon-house. A cow or two
grazed peacefully. Pigs, big and little, crossed the lawn, grunting and
squeaking satisfaction, and dived into the adjacent woods after acorns,
and here and there a truffle the villagers knew not the value of. There
was a pond or two in the lawn; one had a wooden plank fixed on uprights,
that went in some way. A woman was out on the board, bare-armed, dipping
her bucket in for water. In another pond an old knowing horse stood
gravely cooling his heels up to the fetlocks. These, with shirts, male
and female, drying on a line, and whiteheaded children rolling in the
dust, and a donkey braying his heart out for reasons known only to
himself, if known at all, were the principal details of the sylvan
hamlet; but on a general survey there were grand beauties. The village
and its turf lay in the semicircular sweep of an unbroken forest; but at
the sides of the leafy basin glades had been cut for drawing timber,
stacking bark, etc., and what Milton calls so happily "the checkered
shade" was seen in all its beauty; for the hot sun struggled in at every
aperture, and splashed the leaves and the path with fiery flashes and
streaks, and topaz brooches, all intensified in fire and beauty by the
cool adjacent shadows.
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