COUNTRY LIFE
The Valleys They are called "the Valleys," as if there were no others in the world ; and indeed there are few like them. They are cut in limestone, a material that has no fellow as a maker of landscape. The trouble is that if it is carboniferous the loveliest may become the ugliest when shafted with pits, mounded with shale-tips and spotted with gaidenless shacks or slated streets. The narrowest of these proud valleys is in Monmouth, held in by limestone on one side and by carboniferous limestone on the other ; and in these days there is little or no underground wealth to compensate for the surface defacement. "The evil that men do lives after them ; the good is oft interred with their bones." The place is a scroll of the sins of the industrial revolution. The oil age, the electric age and international unfriendliness have put an end to the wealth. The mines are closed indefinitely. The tips remain, the houses remain and the population remains, though its purpose is gone. Cor- ruptio optimi pessima. The most glorious scenery is a "de- pressed area."
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