John Holdsworth, Chief Mate by W. Clark Russell

Hanwitch is nowhere seen to greater advantage than from the summit of the little hill that flanks it on the west. Here, if you are an epicure in your enjoyment of what is picturesque in scenery, you will take your stand at sunset, while the splendour still flushes the heavens, and the country all around is tinted with a delicate crimson haze. In this fairy light, Hanwitch, from where you stand, will resemble some architectural dream; for the serene sky gives an ideality to the proportions which are magnified by the soft combining shadows, and peace broods in the streets. The noble church dedicated to St. James towers in the midst of the houses; its spire glows with the red fire, which a little while before had bathed the whole pile and kindled brilliant stars in its long and narrow windows; and all about the church rise and fall the roofs of closely-grouped houses, manifold in colour, with lines of thin blue smoke mounting straight into the sky. The town lies backed with wooded scenery, and the picturesque outlines of the houses take a new detail of beauty from the relief they give to the soft dark masses of trees and lightlier-coloured fields which make up the farther landscape. And as you watch, a human interest will be communicated to the town by the breaking out here and there of little yellow lights. Darkness soon falls when the crimson flush pales upon the sky; but where you stand daylight is still around, mellowed into deepest, richest, beauty of colour, and so lingering ere it fades into the gray and gloom of twilight.

The town has been enlarged since the days to which this story belongs; but elderly people are living whose love for the old High Street scarcely reconciles them to the "improvements" which have been made in its aspect. Surveyors and local boards press sorely upon gentle prejudices. These elderly people remember the row of antique houses where the big bank building now stands. They remember certain primitive shops, the windows of which were furnished with diamond-shaped panes of glass that discoloured to the eye the wares exposed for sale within. They remember the picturesque alley out of the High Street, with a cottage at the end of it that had a green porch; it looked from its cool retreat upon the narrow slice of the main thoroughfare with its passengers flitting like shadows past the brief opening. And I myself can recall the wonderful effect of light and shadow in that tranquil embrasure when the evenings lengthened, and as I beheld it once -- a maid-servant, picturesquely attired in a red petticoat, lolling within the porch, her hand upon her hips, laughing at a dog that stood on its hind legs begging; the figures shadowed, the windows above burning with the light of the setting sun, the pavement a deep gray.