It is merely one of those quiet corners of flat, homely England, where man and beast seem on good terms with each other, where all green things grow in abundance, where from of old tilth and pasture-land are humbly observant of seasons and alternations, where the brown roads are familiar only with the tread of the labourer, with the light wheel of the farmer's gig, or the rumbling of the solid warn.
"The Nether World"
George Gissing
Tuonela was like this upper earth; the sun shone there, there was no lack of land and water, wood and field, tilth and meadow; there were bears and wolves, snakes and pike, but all things were of a hurtful, dismal kind; the woods dark and swarming with wild beasts, the water black, the cornfields bearing seed of snake's teeth; and there stern, pitiless old Tuoni, and his grim wife and son, with the hooked fingers with iron points, kept watch and ward over the dead lest they should escape.
"A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients"
Edward Tyson
It had for fore-ground a stretch of tilth-olive-trees, honeysuckle hedges, and cypresses.
"Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Vol III."
John Symonds