In the West Country

The darkness deepens. But there is still light enough to follow the deer-path among the trees, whose thick carpeting of brown dry pine-needles is soft as velvet to the feet. It...

Perhaps in time the County Councils may do something for the rustic enlightenment, by means of lectures and the limelight. The rural population is, however, notoriously hard of...

The gravestones round the church on the hill are evidence enough of the risks they run that go down to the sea in ships. More eloquent still are the tales of the old fishermen:-...

Yet perhaps the full beauty of such weather, its wealth of flowers and foliage, its abundance of bird and insect life, above all its half-tropic heat, is for the country rather...

Before the frost began the water was over the garden, and even on the cottage floor. And now, though the house is clear, the ice stretches away almost from the threshold, as far...

When the larches were first planted, and were but just struggling to get their heads above the hillside jungle, grasshopper-warblers hid their nests on the ground among them, an...

Beyond the bridge, through a purple mist of branches, show silver glimpses of the river, then a broad stretch of meadow with dark pine woods above it, among which the young larc...

The heat-glimmer is still quivering on the sand, and over the vast mud-flats, bared by the retreating tide, a soft haze hangs. Yet the sun, sinking slowly through a cloudless sk...

There is a strange stillness in the woods these autumn days; a mournful silence, as of regret for the lost summer. The birds are quiet; the insects, whose life and beauty lent s...

It is a strange experience to hear, in the pauses of the iron reaper, the mellow sound of bells that are ringing for the Harvest Home. Strange to cheer the last load into the st...

It is a fruitful plain, whose level meadows stretch away from the old farm, fading only on the far horizon. So low it lies that, were it not for yonder mounds of sand, whose jag...

Original spelling and punctuation has been retained, with a few exceptions. Some quotation mark errors were corrected. Italicised text has been coded with underscores before and...

The traveller from Clovelly, making his way by coach towards the northern coast of Cornwall, pays no slight penalty, in the early stages of his ride at any rate, for the ease an...