The old street, seen again at
last after so many months of banishment, the same and not the same; the
old, homely street--forgive us, walls and roofs of Uppingham, and forgive
us, you who tenant them, if sometimes perhaps to some of us, as our eyes
swept the grand range of Welsh mountain-tops, or travelled out over
limitless sea distances, there would rise forbidden feelings of
reluctance to exchange these fair things for the bounded views and less
unstinted beauties of our midland home: forgive us, as you may the more
readily because these thoughts, if any such lingered, were charmed away
on the instant by the sight of the real Uppingham. There lay the path to
our home, an avenue of triumphal arches soaring on pillars of greenery,
plumed with sheaves of banners, and enscrolled with such words as those
to whom they spoke will know how to read and remember. Our eyes could
follow through arch after arch the reaches of the gently-winding street,
alive from end to end with waving flags, green boughs, and fanciful
devices, till the quiet golden light in the western sky closed the vista,
and glorified with such a touch of its own mellow splendour the ranges of
brown gables and their floating banners, that for a moment we half
dreamed ourselves spectators of an historic pageant in some "dim, rich
city" of old-world renown.
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