160 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



taking themselves from the woods to the orchard. 

 The game is more than half tame, and one could 

 easily understand that it had a keeper. 



But the look of those fields and parks went straight 

 to my heart. It is not merely that they were so 

 smooth and cultivated, but that they were so benign 

 and maternal, so redolent of cattle and sheep and of 

 patient, homely, farm labor. One gets only here and 

 there a glimpse of such in this country. I see occa- 

 sionally about our farms a patch of an acre or half 

 acre upon which has settled this atmosphere of ripe 

 and loving husbandry ; a choice bit of meadow about 

 the barn or orchard, or near the house, which has 

 had some special fattening, perhaps been the site of 

 some former garden, or barn, or homestead, or which 

 has had the wash of some building, where the feet of 

 children have played for generations, and the flocks 

 and herds been fed in winter, and where they love to 

 lie and ruminate at night a piece of sward thick and 

 smooth, and full of warmth and nutriment, where the 

 grass is greenest and freshest in spring, and the hay 

 finest and thickest in summer. 



This is the character of the whole of England that 

 I saw. I had been told I should see a garden, but I 

 did not know before to what extent the earth could 

 become a living repository of the virtues of so many 

 generations of gardeners. The tendency to run to 

 weeds and wild growths seems to have been utterly 

 eradicated from the soil, and if anything were to 

 spring up spontaneously, I think it would be cabbage 

 and turnips, or grass and grain. 



