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They had walked together from the bridge along that river way, with its tall houses and its little houses, its narrow alleys and its low-roofed inns, which is perhaps the most picturesque part of the river that the shattering march of time has left. He had made intellectual remarks about the effects of the sunlight in the water.
The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.
The sun was high upon the glades of Enfield Chase, and the deer, with which it then abounded, were seen sporting in picturesque groups among the ancient oaks of the forest, when a cavalier and a lady, on foot, although in riding apparel, sauntered slowly up one of the long alleys which were cut through the park for the convenience of the hunters.
The much talk of him on the promenade overnight fetched his name to her thoughts; he scarcely touched a mind that her father filled when she was once again breathing early morning air among the stems of climbing pines, broken alleys of the low-sweeping spruce branches and the bare straight shafts carrying their heads high in the march upward.
Up to a hill anon his steps he reared, From whose high top to ken the prospect round, If cottage were in view, sheepcote, or herd; But cottage, herd, or sheepcote, none he saw; Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove, With chant of tuneful birds resounding loud; Thither he bent his way; determined there To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade High roofed, and walks beneath, and alleys brown, That opened in the midst a woody scene."
These alleys, this wood, through which he had wandered so much, which he began to know in all their windings, and in every corner, began to appear to him in a new aspect. A restrained joy, a repressed gladness emanated from this site, which appeared to him, instead of extending as formerly, to draw near and gather round the crucifix, to turn, as it were, with attention towards the liquid cross.
The feet of the camels paddled over the soft brown earth of the narrow alleys between the brown earth walls, and we looked down to right and left into the shady enclosed spaces, seamed with water rills, dotted with little pools of pale yellow water, and saw always giant palms, with wrinkled trunks and tufted, deep green foliage, brooding in their squadrons over the dimness they had made.
Then just as the foremost horseman passed, scarce twenty yards below us, a puff of wind came up the glen, and the fog rolled off before it. And suddenly a strong red light, cast by the cloud-weight downwards, spread like fingers over the moorland, opened the alleys of darkness, and hung on the steel of the riders.
They sat under the trees in the calm, cool twilight, with the stars twinkling above, and talked and laughed sociably together between the pauses of the music, or strolled up and down the lighted alleys. We walked up and down with them, and thought how much we should enjoy such a scene at home, where the faces around us would be those of friends, and the language our mother tongue!
There seems to be always something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. It abounds in the strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn.
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