Above them glimmers the
dawn of starlight.'--(pp. 109-11.)
From the delineation of this profoundly depressing milieu, by the aid of
which, if the fate of London and Liverpool were to-morrow as that of
Herculaneum and Pompeii, we should be able to reconstruct the gutters of
our Imperial cities (little changed in essentials since the days of
Domitian), Gissing turned his sketch-book to the scenery of rural England.
He makes no attempt at the rich colouring of Kingsley or Blackmore, but, as
page after page of _Ryecroft_ testifies twelve years later, he is a perfect
master of the _aquarelle_.
'The distance is about five miles, and, until Danbury Hill is reached,
the countryside has no point of interest to distinguish it from any
other representative bit of rural Essex. It is merely one of those
quiet corners of flat, homely England, where man and beast seem on
good terms with each other, where all green things grow in abundance,
where from of old tilth and pasture-land are humbly observant of
seasons and alternations, where the brown roads are familiar only with
the tread of the labourer, with the light wheel of the farmer's gig,
or the rumbling of the solid wain.
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