characteristics of park scenery.
how delicious is our old park scenery! how wise that such places as richmond, greenwich, and such old parks in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, are kept up and kept open, that our citizens may occasionally get out of the smoke and noise of the great babel, and breathe all their freshness, and feel all their influence! who does not often, in the midst of brick-and-mortar regions, summon up before his imagination this old park or forest scenery? the ferny or heathy slopes, under old, stately, gnarled oaks, or thorns as old, with ivy having stems nearly as thick as their own, climbing up them, and clinging to them, and sometimes incorporating itself so completely with their heads, as to make them look entirely ivy-trees. the footpaths, with turf short and soft as velvet, running through the bracken. the sunny silence that lies on the open glades and brown uplands; the cool breezy feeling under the shade; the grashopper chithering amongst the bents; the hawk hovering and whimpering over-head; the keeper lounging along in[303] velveteen jacket, and with his gun, at a distance, or firing at some destructive bird. the herds of deer, fallow or red, congregated beneath the shadow of the trees, or lying in the sun if not too warm, their quick ears and tails keeping up a perpetual twinkle; the belling of scattered deer, as they go bounding and mincing daintily across the openings, here and there,—the old ones hoarse and deep, the young shrill and plaintive. cattle with whisking tails, grazing sedately; the woodpecker’s laughter from afar; the little tree-creeper running up the ancient boles, always beginning at the bottom, and going upwards with a quick, gliding, progress—the quaint cries of other birds and wild creatures, the daws and the rooks feeding together, and mingling their different voices of pert and grave accent. the squirrel running with extended tail along the ground, or flourishing it over his head, as he sits on the tree; or fixing himself, when suddenly come upon, in the attitude of an old, brown, decayed branch by the tree side, as motionless as the deadest branch in the forest. the hum of insects all around you, the low still murmur of sunny music,
nature’s ceaseless hum,
voice of the desert, never dumb.
the pheasant’s crow; the pheasant with all her brood springing around you, one by one, from the turf where you are standing amid the bracken—here one! there one! close under your feet, with a sudden, startling whirr,—to compare nature with art, country scenes with city ones, like so many squibs and crackers fired off about you in smart succession, where you don’t look for them. that most ancient and most original of all ladders, a bough with some pegs driven through it, reared against a tree for the keeper to reach the nests of hawks or magpies, or to fetch down a brood of young jackdaws for a pie, quite as savoury a dish as one made with young rooks or pigeons; or for him to sit aloft amongst the foliage, and watch for the approach of deer, or fawn, when he is commissioned to shoot one. the profound and basking silence all around you, as you sit on some dry ferny mound, and look far and wide through the glimmering heat, or the cool shadow. the far-off sounds—rooks telling of some old hall that stands slumberously amid the woods; or dogs, sending from their[304] hidden kennel amongst the trees, their sonorous yelling. forest smells, that rise up deliciously as you cross dim thickets or tread the spongy turf all fragrant with thyme, and sprinkled with the light harebell. huge limbs of oak riven off by tempests, or the old oak itself, a vast, knotty, and decayed mass, lying on the ground, and perhaps the woodman gravely labouring upon it, lopping its boughs, riving its huge, misshapen stem, piling it in stacks of cord-wood, or binding them into billets. the keeper’s house near, in its own paled enclosure; and all about, old thorns hung with the dried and haggard remains of wild-cats, polecats, weasels, hawks, owls, jays, and other vermin, as he deems them; or the same most picturesquely displayed on the sturdy boles of the vast oaks; and lastly, the mere, the lake, in the depth of the woodlands, shrouded in screening masses of flags and reeds, the beautiful flowering-rush, the magnificent great water-dock, with leaves as huge and green as if they grew by some indian river—the tall club-mace, the thousands of wild-ducks, teals, or wigeons, that start up at your approach with clattering wings, and cries of quick alarm.
who that has wandered through our old parks and forests, is not familiar with all these sights and sounds? does not long to witness them again, ever and anon, when he has been “long in city pent,” till he is fain to mount his horse and ride off into some such ancient, quiet, and dreamy region, as crabbe suddenly mounted his, and rode forty miles to see again the sea?
