A KENTISH PARISH 65 



to be more accessible, and to become more generally 

 known, to be a favourite resort of jaded Londoners. 

 Nothing can possibly be more lovely than the rich 

 variety of its scenery ; and among its many attrac- 

 tions of hill and dale, park and farm-land, waste and 

 wood, the only thing that perhaps is lacking is water. 

 Not that it has not a river of its own, which rises in 

 the springs above the town ; but the Flete runs away 

 into the bottom of the Lowbeech valley, where its 

 infant water-power turns the wheels of some paper- 

 mills ; and elsewhere there is little but rush-grown 

 pools stagnating in hollows among the hanging woods. 

 Oakenhurst is but twenty miles from town, and yet 

 its landscapes are as wild, and its surface as broken, as 

 in ever a parish in the English lowlands. The land 

 is held on short leases ; nobody has any idea of high- 

 farming ; and it is but here and there that there are 

 fields flat enough or big enough to make it worth one's 

 while to employ the steam-plough. Generally speaking, 

 the enclosures follow the rolling outlines of a jumble of 

 bluffs and wooded eminences, running in and out of the 

 charts and copses, and cut up into the most irregular 

 and fantastic patterns. Never was such a country for 

 hedgerows. There are snaky, sinuous jungles of thorn 

 and ash, holly and hazel, interlaced with bramble of 

 the most luxuriant growth, and festooned with honey- 

 suckle, dog-roses, and briony. The birds build in 

 them by myriads, while rabbits and ground vermin 

 multiply among their roots. In many places, with 

 their natural chevaux de frise, they set the inroads of 



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