Probably Professor Valeyon would have been at a loss to explain why he valued this small green spot so much; but, in times of doubt or trouble, be seemed to find help and relief in gazing at it.
The entire range of hills was covered with a dense and tangled timber-growth, save where the wood-cutters had cleared out a steep, rectangular space, and dotted it with pale-yellow lumber-piles, that looked as if nothing less than a miracle kept them from rolling over and over down to the bottom of the valley, or where the gray, irregular face of a precipice denied all foothold to the boldest roots.

There was nothing smooth, swelling, or graceful, in the aspect of the range.

They seemed, hills though they were, to be inspired with the souls of mountains, which were ever seeking to burst the narrow bounds that confined them.

And, for his part, the professor liked them much better than if they had been mountains indeed.

They gave an impression of greater energy and vitality, and were all the more comprehensible and lovable, because not too sublime and vast.
In another way, his garden afforded as much pleasure to the professor as his hills.