In a stern land like Cornwall that so often refuses the consolations of grass and herb and tree, the relentings are the more gracious. These are to be found in a whole valley where there are sloping fields of corn and grass divided by green hedges, and woods rich and misty and warm, and the bones of the land are buried away until it ends in a bay where high and cavernous dark rocks stand on either side of blue water and level sand. Often all the sweetness of the country round seems to have run into one great roadside hedge as dewdrops collect in the bosom of a leaf. The stones of the original wall are themselves deeply hidden in turf, or from the crevices ferns descend and the pale blooms of pennywort rise up; the lichen is furry and the yellow or pink stonecrop is neat and dense; ivy climbs closely up and hangs down in loose array. Up from the top of the wall or mound rise bramble and gorse and woodbine over them, or brier and thorn and woodbine again; and the tallest and massiest of foxgloves cleave through these with their bells, half a hundred of them in rows five deep already open and as many more yet in bud, dense as grapes, dewy, murmurous; and below the foxgloves are slender parsleys, rough wood sage and poppies. At the foot of the wall, between it and the road, is a grassy strip, where the yarrow grows feathery with gilded cinquefoil and tormentil--or above nettles as dense as corn rise large discs of white hog parsnip flower, a coarse and often dirty flower that has a dry smell of summer--or bramble and brier arch this way and that their green and rosy and purple stems, bright leaves, flowers pink and white. Only the shin-breaking Cornish stiles of stone, interrupting the hedge and giving a view of barren hills or craggy-sided sea, destroy the illusion created by this exuberance of herb and bush and the perfume of woodbine and rose.