it stood so lonesome to the naked eye, with the aid of a good glass

the burghers of Brandenau could count its windows from the lime-tree

terrace where they walked at night.

In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the

horns continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as

the sun began to draw near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing

triumph announced the slaughter of the quarry. The first and second

huntsman had drawn somewhat aside, and from the summit of a knoll

gazed down before them on the drooping shoulders of the hill and

across the expanse of plain. They covered their eyes, for the sun

was in their faces. The glory of its going down was somewhat pale.

Through the confused tracery of many thousands of naked poplars, the

smoke of so many houses, and the evening steam ascending from the

fields, the sails of a windmill on a gentle eminence moved very

conspicuously, like a donkey's ears. And hard by, like an open

gash, the imperial high-road ran straight sun-ward, an artery of

travel.

There is one of nature's spiritual ditties, that has not yet been

set to words or human music: 'The Invitation to the Road'; an air

continually sounding in the ears of gipsies, and to whose

inspiration our nomadic fathers journeyed all their days. The hour,

the season, and the scene, all were in delicate accordance. The air

was full of birds of passage, steering westward and northward over

Grunewald, an army of specks to the up-looking eye. And below, the

great practicable road was bound for the same quarter.

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