262 SOME FAMOUS GARDENS 



OXFORD GARDENS 



(Prom " Star Papers ") 



I WAS even more delighted with the grounds and 

 walks, than with the twilight seclusion of the 

 cloistered rooms. I sat down in the recess of a 

 window, in one of the students' rooms, and looked 

 out into an exquisite nook, with a large mound, 

 not unlike some of our conical hills in the rolling 

 lands of the West, planted with shrubs and trees 

 to the very top. Is there anything more bewitching 

 than to look up, beneath the branches of trees, upon 

 the ascent of a hill? The grass was like the pile 

 of velvet, thick, even, deeply green, and with a 

 crisp, succulent look, that made you feel that 

 Nebuchadnezzar had not so bad a diet after all. 

 The grounds were laid out with parterres of flowers, 

 clumps of trees, gravelled walks artfully traced to 

 produce the utmost illusion, vines, and upon every 

 unsightly object, and along the stone fence, that 

 glorious sheet of ivy that, everywhere in England, 

 encases walls and towers in vegetable emerald. In 

 these delicious coverts, birds hopped about in literary 

 seclusion, or chatted with each other in musical 

 notes, such as Jenny Lind might be supposed to 

 sing to her sleeping cradle, or to a frolicking child. 

 It is a very paradise of seclusion. Noise seemed 

 like an antediluvian legend as I sat and dreamed 

 in the slumberous stillness. 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



