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Bridge ; this bridge had looked on the scene for centuries . Thence the torrent leaped , and spinned , and whizzed , and rattled y and grumbled through a glen of crags , brambles , bushes , and moss-coated trees , till it suddenly calmed by expanding into a stream ten times its breadth hitherto , and glistened smoothly on between two gentle slopes , one of which was treeless turf , the other a rich and vary-tinted
wood ; and continued in this gentle course through the fertile vale of U— , till it emptied its tributes into the liquid amber of the river which gives the name to the vale . The whole scene combined every beauty of landscape . There was the Craggy , wild , romantic , reposing , solitary , picturesque , gentle and undulating , verdant and cultivated , and the many hues of scantiness , just living on sterility—all that a
lover of scenery could wish , except an expansive coi / p-d'ceil . I have been thus tediously particular in attempting to describe the reflections of memory , to paint impressions which I took when a child , ( for I was but four years old when I quitted this my first home , ) because the change was , to me , so horrible when , after an absence of thirty-three years , I visited the scenes of my infancy , I came and found all civilized .
It was on a glorious day in the glorious month of June , 1828 , ( I hate winter in England—all slop and shiver during the dingy five months , except for some half hour which merely serves to jog the traveller's memory of the magnificent winter he has luxuriated through in Cabotea , ) that I set off from A— , not sad , for there is too much beauty in the scenery in that vicinity to allow of sadness , but anxious ; there was a foreboding of something unpleasant in my mind .
I never spoke to any one on the subject , I made no inquiries , but I had read in the Directory that the small town of P— had , within the late few years , increased in size and population in consequence of the works which were established in the neighbourhood by the enterprising , —somebodies—and was prepared to expect the * improvement , '—that ' s the phrase , the expressive phrase , —had produced some
change in its appearance ; yet there was a hope that my mind would revel in delight . Road-posts were my guides through all that my memory knew not ; till , on rounding a hill that made itself known to me through the tongue of the outspread vale below , which being , luckily for it , too worthless for the improver ' s experiments , was as beautiful as ever , I looked at once on what had been the scene on
which for so many yearH 1 had turned my eye with a sad pleasure and affection . I gasped with horror !—ay , with horror !—on beholding it . Ranges of dark and mystical architecture , demon temples , frowned in every direction ; flames hissed and roared from a hundred yawning gulfs . Ponderous black blocks of smoke pushed themselves upwards into frightful columns , and then densely spread out agaiual the face of the insulted sky . Here and there , mingled in the gloom , were
seen still more disgusting masses of dirty white vapours , heavily and sluggishly attempting to rise , and , as they rose , turning into that threatening sickly , reddish yellow , which looks an impersonation of pestilence and destruction , palpable and living . The tornado of Africa , and the typhon of the China sea , seemed embowelied in them , and ready to burst forth . In the typhon and tornado atmospheres , you have grandeur , magnificence , sublimity ; but these were stink :
Untitled Article
328 Autobiography of Pel . Verjuice .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 328, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/40/
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