CHAPTER XIV 



THE WILDERNESS 



" The Muse of Rural Life, I link the races, 



Nature renews my chaplet with her Mays ; 

 To thee the Lark sings as it sung to Horace, 

 And here, as in Ustica, Horace sings." 



THUS wrote Bulwer Lytton when he planned the Horace garden 

 at Knebworth, the stately Hertfordshire home of the Lyttons, 

 and adjoining this secluded garden there is situate the Wilderness 

 I have to write about in this Chapter. This latter was designed 

 by Kobert, First Earl of Lytton, Courtier and Poet, in 1881. 



Although called the wilderness from the fact that here Nature 

 is allowed to follow her own unfettered coufse, if I was invited 

 to act as sponsor at a rechristening of this charming and never- 

 to-be-forgotten retreat, I would name it the Naturalists' Paradise. 

 This memorable May-day, as I wandered amid the tangled grasses 

 of the wilderness and looked at the blue sky above, there stole 

 into my heart thoughts that, as Wordsworth would say, " do 

 lie too deep for tears." From bush and copse, briar and thorn, 

 there resounded sweet bird music from a thousand instrumental 

 throats, which acted and reacted as Spring magic upon the two 

 silent witnesses of this jubilancy of song. Sprightly Chaffinches, 

 their wings flashing with white as they darted past, vied with 

 one another in supremacy of voice, and with Willow Warblers 

 the piccolo soloists melodious Blackcaps, and persistent 

 Chiff-Chafls, largely constituted the chief performers in the 

 feathered choir of the wilderness. 



To one not versed in bird music, or knowing little of the renewal 

 of Nature's chaplet with the May, about which the famous 

 Novelist wrote, as set out at the head of this chapter, the wilder- 

 ness would doubtless prove just a pleasant place in which to 

 wander, and that is all. To the devoted student of Nature, 

 however, it is a happy hunting ground for wild creatures both 

 animals and plants the like of which I have never known 

 excelled in a given area. 



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