The "Cathedral" 139 



the good vicar calls his " cathedral," and the beaming 

 delight with which he will take a stranger to the proper 

 point from which to see this truly Gothic aisle-like 

 effect on a moonlit night, speaks fully for his sense of 

 the picturesque, and his love of the poetry of nature. 

 And indeed, so seen, his cathedral is right well worthy 

 of the name he has given it, for the branches when 

 looked at thus, give the idea of groinings in beautiful 

 fret-work, enriched with the sense as of some divine 

 tracery, flowing in delicious lines and losing themselves 

 in a maze of others like a mist, all due to the moon- 

 light stealing through ; so that you really have some- 

 thing suggestive of the effect of light through richly 

 stained glass " the dim religious light " in very truth. 

 This, however, only if the moonlight be bright enough, 

 and at the season when the trees are in full foliage, and 

 in that richest tint of green which has the indescribable 

 and almost mysterious effect of throwing some faint 

 suggestion of blue into the shadows they cast. And, 

 indeed, from the sweeping of the pendulous branches 

 over the little walk all the way from the lower gate 

 entering to the park from the road, you have nothing 

 short of leafy cloisters ; so that the vicar has through- 

 out the summer and early autumn a truly cloisteral 

 approach from this point to his cathedral. 



Dotted into the park itself, with the most artistic 

 regard to points of view, are copper-beeches, pollard 

 oaks, with sweeping branches, tent-like, broad, umbra- 

 geous, walnut trees, birches graceful ladies-of-the- 

 wood, and a few mountain ashes " Oh, rowan tree ; 

 oh, rowan tree, thou'lt aye be dear to me ! " There 

 are the rich-looking medlar, fully clad, the graceful 

 spruce, and the weeping willow. And from whatever 

 part of this boundary you may look, you cannot but 



