the memory of winter seems to be still lingering about these
wind-swept fells, about the farm-houses, with their rough serviceable
walls, of the same stone as the crags behind them, and the ravines
in which the shrunken brooks trickle musically down through the
_debris_ of innumerable Decembers. The country is blithe, but
soberly blithe. Nature shows herself delightful to man, but there
is nothing absorbing or intoxicating about her. Man is still well
able to defend himself against her, to live his own independent
life of labor and of will, and to develop that tenacity of hidden
feeling, that slowly growing intensity of purpose which is so often
wiled out of him by the spells of the South.

The distant aspect of Burwood Farm differed in nothing from that
of the few other farmhouses which dotted the fells or clustered
beside the river between it and the rocky end of the valley. But
as one came nearer certain signs of difference became visible. The
garden, instead of being the old-fashioned medley of phloxes,
lavender bushes, monthly roses, gooseberry trees, herbs, and pampas
grass, with which the farmers' wives of Long Whindale loved to fill
their little front enclosures, was trimly laid down in turf dotted
with neat flowerbeds, full at the moment we are writing of with
orderly patches of scarlet and purple anemones, wallflowers, and
pansies. At the side of the house a new bow window, modest enough
in dimensions and make, had been thrown out on to another close-shaven
piece of lawn, and by its suggestion of a distant sophisticated
order of things disturbed the homely impression left by the untouched
ivy-grown walls, the unpretending porch, and wide slate-window sills
of the front. And evidently the line of sheds standing level with
the dwelling-house no longer sheltered the animals, the carts, or
the tools which make the small capital of a Westmoreland farmer.