The Argosy — page 236: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Under Northern Skies. 219 away in hills and valleys, laughing, fertile and wooded, and terminates in wild and rugged rocks. Inland, the aspect is the exact opposite to allthis. It is a pastoral scene of peace and plenty. A succes- sion of fields, well cultivated and productive. ‘The waving corn is conspicuous ; the flowering clover, and the hay drying upon the meadows, delight the senses. Straight, white roads intersect the fields ; roads well made and well kept, as everything is in this flourishing island. Bornholm is a wonderfully green oasis in the midst of a desert of water. Yet its attractions are so simple and unpretending that one must be keenly sensitive to the beauties of nature to appreciate and feel its influence. There will be found no excitement to awaken violent emotions in a single acre of the whole island. Its charms are of quite a different description. On our way this afternoon, we passed the largest of the circular churches in Bornholm, forming quite a small settlement. There was the bell tower near it, which, of course, we mounted. But the keeper of these treasures, the sexton, whether old or young we could not tell, was absent. He was away in the fields, haymaking, and had been good enough to leave all doors open for the benefit of strayers and strangers. In his absence, the bells had rest. We thought it wiser not to ring a peal, startling the air, and bringing up the good man to see what had gone wrong or who was trespassing. (The view from the tower well repaid us for our trouble in mounting ; dis- closed a wide surface of laughing fields, intersected by long white roads, and here and there a farm house with its dependencies, larger and more important than itself, a far off sapphire sea shimmering in the sunshine, as broad and full and warm now at three o’clock in the afternoon as it had been at ten in the morning. In the midst of the sea, the small island and refuge of Christianso looked like a cloud hardly bigger than a man’s hand rising out of the water. Groves and plantations of trees here and there broke the flat surface of Bornholm, and the monotony of the corn-fields: green waving avenues delicious for the eye to rest upon, still more grateful and delicious to pass into out of the sun’s glare and heat. Just below was the vicarage, outside the little grave-yard, separated from it by a garden stocked with roses. It was very difficult to restrain the wish to enter and keep one’s hands from picking and stealing. Probably, no one would less have objected than the good Vicar. But for want of courage, or for want of a little knowledge, we miss many good things in life. A conscience over tender, and to be righteous over much, inevitably debars one from many things in this world that would otherwise be lawful. ‘The vicarage, like the church, was white, and looked cool and inviting. Creepers hung about the windows, and flowers within spoke of a ministering spirit, sensible of the influence of refinement. ‘The house was quite impos- ing, and seemed almost larger than the church, if not so lofty. As usual, in the grave-yard were more small wooden crosses than COnmnicbooks (CO)