A Filbert Walk. 77 



despite their priekty leaves, are favorites with gar- 

 den birds. It would be possible, "I think, to so plan 

 out a garden as to attract almost every feathered 

 creature. 



A fine old filbert walk extends far awav towards 

 the orchard : the branches meet overhead. In 

 autumn the fruit hangs thick ; and what is more 

 exquisite, when gathered from the bough and eaten, 

 as all fruit should be, on the spot? I cannot under- 

 stand why filbert walks are not planted by our 

 modern capitalists, who make nothing of spending 

 a thousand pounds in forcing-houses. I cannot help 

 thinking that true taste consists in the selection of 

 what is thoroughly characteristic of soil and climate. 

 Those magnificent yew hedges, the filbert walk all 

 in fact are to be levelled to make way for a garish 

 stucco-fronted hunting-box, with staring red stables 

 and every modern convenience. The sun-dial shaft 

 is already heaved up and broken. 



The old mansion was used as a grammar school 

 for a great many years, but has been deserted for 

 the last quarter of a centuiy ; and melancholy indeed 

 are the silent hollow halls and dormitories. The 

 whitewashed walls are yellow and green from damp, 

 and covered in patches with saltpetre efflorescence ; 

 but they still bear the hasty inscriptions scrawled 

 on 'them by boyish hands some far back in the 

 eighteenth century. The history of this little king- 

 dom, with its dynasties of tutors and masters, its 

 succeeding generations of joyous youth, might be 

 gathered from these writings on the walls : sketches 

 in burned stick or charcoal of extinct monarchs of 

 the desk ; rude doggerel verses ; curious jingles of 



