Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. FERNY RAMBLES IN SOUTH DEVON. ' HAT can be more delightful for the tired and jaded dwellers in our crowded cities, after dragging on an unhealthy existence during the long winter months within the domain of bricks and mortar, than a swift journey away out of the smoke, the bustle, the din, and the worry of city life, in the joyous month of May? A swift journey it must be, so that the disagreeable surroundings of the town may be rapidly left behind, and the loveliness of the fields and hedge-rows may, as rapidly, burst on the tired eyes—tired, that is to say, of the stale sight of paved streets and tall houses, but eager,with an inexpressible eagerness, for the trees and green lanes of the country. And if a journey anywhere to green fields and green trees be delightful, how intensely enjoyable it must be to speed away to the ferny lanes of Devonshire ! Can those, we wonder, who have never visited that exquisitely beautiful county, have the smallest idea of the inexpressible loveliness of its green and ferny lanes ? How can we induce those who have never visited the ' garden of England ' to do so without delay ? The attempt is, at least, worth a trial. We have in a previous chapter explained that during a summer visit we had roughly noted down our impressions of two charming green lanes in South Devon. Our notes were lightly jotted down and lightly thrown together. But we determined to expand our Fern papers so that they might reach the dimensions of a volume. With this object in view we needed to obtain fresh materials, and in order that these might be of the freshest kind, other visits to the delightful lanes of Devonshire would be necessary. We therefore decided that our plan of operations should be asfollows. Selecting Totnes—perhaps the most beautiful s...