A KENTISH PARISH 67 



flat surrounding the little town ; to the south of the 

 town there rises abruptly a precipitous line of wooded 

 heights ; while away from these stretches the whole 

 width of the Weald, studded with the spires of 

 innumerable churches. Everywhere on the lower 

 ground, as on the lower slopes of each eminence, the 

 oaks are flourishing in all their grandeur ; the hedges 

 are full of them, as they throw their limbs across the 

 lanes, and cast the great breadth of their shadows far 

 into the neighbouring pastures ; while in the parks 

 that lie locked in the folds of the hills are stately clumps 

 of magnificent beeches. As for the numerous ridges, 

 when they are not crowned by the charts a purely 

 Kentish feature, of which we shall speak by and by 

 they are broken by black groups of Scotch firs, which 

 remind the traveller of Italian stone-pines. There are 

 dense thickets of spruce, straggling with their self-sown 

 seedlings into the skirts of the heather ; and each nook 

 of the fields and each dip of the ground is lined with 

 a copse or a matted spinney. Much of the wood is 

 regularly cut every seven years or so to serve for hop- 

 poles, wattles, and hurdles. The great knotted roots, 

 shooting out in a dozen or more of tapering saplings, 

 look as if they had held their own in the soil from time 

 immemorial. And each second spring after the 

 periodical cutting a flush of primroses covers the 

 ground, while legions of fairies might play hide-and- 

 seek in the beds of anemones, daffodils, and bluebells. 



But although the sylvan scenery is as enchanting as 

 could be desired, with glades as tempting to dryads and 



