There are lots of waste ground by the side of the roads in every village, amounting often to village greens, where feed the pigs and ganders of the people; and these roads are old-fashioned, homely roads, very dirty and badly made, and hardly endurable in winter, but still pleasant jog-trot roads running through the great pasture-lands, dotted here and there with little clumps of thorns, where the sleek kine are feeding, with no fence on either side of them, and a gate at the end of each field, which makes you get out of your gig (if you keep one), and gives you a chance of looking about you every quarter of a mile.
One of the moralists whom we sat under in our youth--was it the great Richard Swiveller, or Mr.Stiggins--says, "We are born in a vale, and must take the consequences of being found in such a situation." These consequences I, for one, am ready to encounter.

I pity people who weren't born in a vale.

I don't mean a flat country; but a vale--that is, a flat country bounded by hills.

The having your hill always in view if you choose to turn towards him--that's the essence of a vale.

There he is for ever in the distance, your friend and companion.