I have seen bigger ones--but they're steep enough--bleak and cold, too, especially when one is lying out among the sheep.

At a distance they look pleasant.

This is a very pretty view." Ay, so I had always thought it; more so than ever now, when I had some one to say to how "very pretty" it was.

Let me describe it--this first landscape, the sole picture of my boyish days, and vivid as all such pictures are.
At the end of the arbour the wall which enclosed us on the riverward side was cut down--my father had done it at my asking--so as to make a seat, something after the fashion of Queen Mary's seat at Stirling, of which I had read.

Thence, one could see a goodly sweep of country.
First, close below, flowed the Avon--Shakspeare's Avon--here a narrow, sluggish stream, but capable, as we at Norton Bury sometimes knew to our cost, of being roused into fierceness and foam.