The ox dappled with
a thousand spots, which nature seemed to have applied with a wanton and
playful hand; the cow, whose udders were distended with milk, that
appeared to call for the interposition of the maidens to lighten them of
their store; and the lordly and majestic bull. With them was
intermingled the horse, whose limbs seemed to be formed for speed and
beauty. At a small distance were the stag with branching horns, the
timid deer, and the sportive, frisking fawn. Even from the rugged
precipices, that seemed intended by nature to lie waste and useless,
depended the shaggy goat and the tender kid. Beside all this, Roderic
had had communicated to him, by a supernatural afflatus, that wondrous
art, as yet unknown in the plains of Albion, of turning up the soil with
a share of iron, and scattering it with a small quantity of those grains
which are most useful to man, to expect to gather, after a short
interval, a forty-fold increase.
Every thing conspired to communicate to the prospect lustre and
attraction. The birds, with their various song, gave an air of
populousness and animation to the grove. By the side of the rivulets
were scattered here and there the huts of the shepherd and husbandman.
And though these swains were not, like the happy dwellers in the valley,
enlivened with freedom, and made careless and gay by conscious
innocence; yet were they skilful to give clearness and melody to the
slender reed; and the ploughman whistled as he drove afield.
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