Village

“ So when we walk, nothing impure comes near;
Each field seems Eden, and each calm retreat;
Each village seems the haunt of holy feet.
But that sweet village, where my black-eyed maid
Closes her eyes in sleep beneath night's shade,
Whene'er I enter, more than mortal fire
Burns in my soul, and does my song inspire. ”

“ Never did the eye of man dwell upon a more smiling village. A village? No; it rather resembles a large borough. From at least six to seven hundred houses are scattered on the slope of that hill, without counting the vast thatched structures that are situated below on the meadow, which is watered by a river that rises to the north of the valley, crosses it and forms its boundary far away where the horizon dips. ”

“ Our billet is a village with shell-scarred trees lining its streets, and grass peeping over its fallen masonry, a few inn signs still swing and look like corpses hanging; at night they creak as if in agony. ”

“ Now, the summoning church-bell tolls its solemn note; school children, with merry laugh and light step, cross the common; the village is astir, and a human tide is setting towards its sacred portals: all, all speaks to the heart and to the imagination of happy days and happy scenes in a far-off land. ”

“ Far and near are lovely white villages nestling under elms, in the heart of fields and meadows; and everywhere the long, narrow, accurately divided farms stretch downward to the river-shores. The best roads on the continent make this beauty and richness accessible; each little village boasts some natural wonder in stream, or lake, or cataract: and this landscape, magnificent beyond any in eastern America, is historical and interesting beyond all others. ”

“ And then, of course, a village is not merely a village, not merely the broad and rutted roads and the cottages planted among the pigs and fowls. The village has its ways out, its views, its hillsides and streams, its loveliness on all sides. Your long halt is not a sitting still in a human settlement, but a starwise tour of all the country round about.
Going on and on in a line of route has its drawbacks. The world is not a straight line, not even a crooked line, not even the line of a [Pg 193] man’s steps upon it—it is an area, a broad surface. ”

“ You can distinguish the Christian village by such signs as these the straightness and regularity of the streets, the superior con struction and neatness and cleanness of the cottages, the double row of tulip-trees or cocoa-nut palms, planted along each street for ornament as well as for shade, and the air of humble re spectability which everywhere meets your view all so different from the filth and indecency, the disorder and neglect, which assure the visitor that a village is heathen. You notice also, as you pass through, a marked difference in the people themselves especially in the women. ”

“ I can see little villages, and a great city, and forests and planted fields, and familiar faces; and all have this advantage: they are not fixed and without motion, like the pictures in the ordinary book. People are walking up the streets of the village, the trees are tossing, the tall wheat and corn in the fields salute me. I can smell the odour of the gathered hay, and the faces in my dream-book smile at me. ”

“ You can not now travel a mile through that midland region of plenty and prosperity without hearing the merry chime of village bells from many a country spire, without passing the happy doors of hundreds of low cottage homes, hundreds of pleasant hamlets courting the mellow sunshine from some laughing knoll, or nestling in the shrubberies of some orchard-mantled hollow. ”

“ The day is over, the day which has been so hard and toilful even for the children,—and with the night comes rest and play. The village, so deserted before, is alive with voices; the elders cluster round the courtyard doors, the little ones whoop through the narrow alleys. ”

“ Presently, soon after you have got out of sight of the village, you ascend a gentle hill, and suddenly come upon an old, old house, with its wooden ribs appearing, crossing each other, through the stone walls, and a roof that looks as if about to fall in upon the people who inhabit it. ”

“ Village after village was passed both on his right hand and on his left, and many were the strange sights that met his gaze. The fields became more verdant, the flowers more beautiful, the scenery more gorgeous, and the people more like nymphs and fairies. The color of the clouds and the atmosphere was of a richer, softer hue; while the breezes which wafted his frail bark were milder and gentler than any he had known before.
Despairing at last of reaching the source he stopped at a village where he saw a maiden spinning and a young man leading an ox to drink. ”

“ The steamer carried us past village after village most beautiful as seen in passing; but again, my dear C., I warn you not to let this, the greenest word in memory, call before you wide streets, shaded courtyards, ample space, and all rural luxuries. A village here is a mass of wretched dwellings stuck against mouldering walls, where human existence, in point of comfort, is nearly on a level with the brutes; in fact, the same roof often shelters all the live-stock, from the master to his ass. ”

“ And towards nightfall the dusty road will be thronged with shadowy people and unladen asses and new-laden mules, urging silently into the country again, their backs to the town, glad to get away from the town, to see the cactus and the pleated hills, and the trees that mean a village. In some village they will lie under a tree, or under a wall, and sleep. ”

“ The village people live in the village, and keep themselves to themselves; the summer people live in boarding houses and in nice new bungalows on the edge of town, and associate with each other; and the artists and writers live out in the more inaccessible regions, perched on the edges of ravines, and turn up their noses at everybody else. ”

“ The silent, deserted village becomes a scene of the busiest life and animation. Doors burst open on every hand, and out rush men, and race head down against the wind for the building where the bell is ringing. ”

“ This village is built upon an open prairie, and the gracefully undulating hills that rise in distance behind it are everywhere covered with a verdant green turf, without a tree or a bush anywhere to be seen. ”

“ At length the villagers, wearied with their exertions, retire to their cottage homes, marching in procession from the scene of their observances; and silence reigns o'er the village for a few short hours, till the sunlight summons them to their daily toil. ”

“ Every hillside smiles with an abundant harvest, every valley shelters a thriving village, the click of a busy mill drowns the prattle of every rivulet, and all the multitudinous sounds of business denote happy activity in every branch of social occupation. ”

“ OUR village, that’s to say, not Miss Mitford’s village, but our village of Bullock’s Smithy,
Is come into by an avenue of trees, three oak pollards, two elders, and a withy;
And in the middle there’s a green, of about not exceeding an acre and a half;
It’s common to all and fed off by nineteen cows, six ponies, three horses, five asses, two foals, seven pigs and a calf! ”

“ Wearied mortals are creeping home from their field-labour; the village-artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has strolled forth to the village-street for a sweet mouthful of air and human news. ”

“ At night, when no wars or excitement of any kind stirred the village, they would gather in the chiefs or other great bark lodges around the fires, and tell and listen to stories ; a red wall of men in a great circle, the women a little back, and the children still behind, asleep in the skins and blankets. ”

“ Near the village, quantities of lodging-houses, built like Swiss châlets, are rising up everywhere in the wood, without walls, hedges, or gardens, just like a fairy story, and in the forest itself it is always warm, no winds or frosts penetrating the vast living walls of green. ”

“ Let us have a good many Maples and Hickories and Scarlet Oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. ”

“ Here and there, as we skimmed along the shore of the forest-clad mountains of the mainland, we would pass a village of six or seven houses, and the small-made, light-complexioned folk would, as they heard the sound of our voices, come out and eagerly beseech us to come in "and eat and rest awhile." ”

“ The ruder nature of woods and villages, of sturdy ploughmen and the healthy though soiled and ragged children in rural neighbourhoods, affords a by no means unpleasing contrast and introduction to the trim trees and smoothly undulating lawns, and curved walks, and gay parterres, and fine ladies and well dressed and graceful children on some old ancestral estate. We look for rusticity in the village, and for elegance in the park. ”

“ It dipped down into a valley too, and passed through a quiet, peaceful little village, with a group of tall silver poplars before the church, and a congregation of fine old beech trees around the rectory. The whole aspect of the place was home tranquillity; that of a purely English village under the most favourable circumstances. Cleanliness, neatness, rustic ornament, an air of comfort, a cheerful openness, a look of healthfulness. How different from the villages one sometimes sees, alas! in every country ”

“ After toiling up an ascent of three or four miles, as you stop to breathe your panting steed, which, if bred in the country, toils so faithfully for you, your eye is filled with all kinds of scenery. Here on your right reposes a village, with its neat white houses, in a rich valley, the land rising in hills in every direction from it, partly wooded, with here and there a wide pasture of close-cropped green, dotted with the fleecy flock and lowing kine. ”

“ The village was grey in the early morning light, with a great stillness upon cottages and roads, though already blinds were drawn up, and doors open here and there, showing that the work of life was even now astir. ”

“ The buzz of a village, like the hum of a city, represents a very wonderful variety of human accent and feeling. It is marvellous how few families thrown together will suffice to furnish forth this dubia coena of sweets and bitters. ”

“ The village is a straggling one, built out of grey stone and put together from the remains of ancient ruins. In the barrenest of pasture land, and having no more than three months’ summer, it is strange that anyone should have chosen to live there. ”

“ At a distance of about a quarter of a mile lay the village, such a spruce and trim place as villages are which live in kindly neighbourship with a rich Lord of the Manor and a fastidious Rector—their gardens, their windows, everything was in good order. ”

“ The day is most lovely, the fields are deserted, and the roads and villages are alive with holiday-making peasants. In every village a tall pole is erected, and decorated from top to bottom with small flags and evergreen wreaths. ”

“ We had resolved to visit the village of Helwân, parts of which we could just distinguish from our mooring-ground, peeping between groves of palms, sycamores, and acacias * * * with the bold line of rocks beyond. * * * The village, which has many neat houses, is approached on all sides between the lofty mud walls of gardens, full of trees, that, drooping over, form not unpicturesque avenues. ”

“ I knew, in my youth, a French village far up among the Cevennes Mountains, where the one cultivated man of the place, saddened by the unlovely lives of the peasants around him and by the bare walls of the village school, organized evening classes for the boys. ”

“ On the banks of that stream, where the pale face first crossed to hold a council with his red brethren, stands a flourishing village, reared by the hand of civilization, and offering many facilities to the industry of its virtuous and well disposed inhabitants. ”

“ It is not an imaginary village—a village of Nowhere—but a very real village, which can be reached, as all other villages can, by rail and road. It nestles at the foot of a long range of hills; and if you will climb the slope that rises at the back of the village, and look over the level country that you have left behind, you will see in the distance the gleaming waters of one of the many seas that wash our shores. The village is fairly large, as villages go in these days of rural depopulation ”

“ The small village rises to a spacious town or city; substantial edifices of brick, extensive fields, orchards, gardens, colleges, and churches are seen. Broadcloths, silks, leghorns, crapes, and all the refinements, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities, and fashions are in vogue. ”

“ We will walk together through the main roads of the village, and observe some of its many points of interest. Indeed, it is no small thing to live in such a “city of memories” as every village is, when at every turn and corner we meet with something that reminds us of the past, and recalls the pleasing associations of old village life. ”

“ When, after a steep ascent, we had reached the top of the hill, we saw a village about half a mile before us on the side of another hill, which rose up above the spot where we were, after a descent, a sort of valley or hollow. Nothing grew upon this ground, or the hills above or below, but heather, yet round about the village—which consisted of a great number of huts, all alike, and all thatched, with a few larger slated houses among them, and a single modern-built one of a considerable size—were a hundred patches of cultivated ground, potatoes, oats, hay, and grass. ”

“ Though, at first sight, the village appeared an isolated, sleepy place, yet a plunge into its activities and a catching of its spirit meant the discovery of a number of enterprising, intellectual, and social efforts, of which any large community would have been proud. ”