AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK. 



There is an old park wall which follows the highway 

 in all its turns with such fidelity of curve that for some 

 two miles it seems as if the road had been fitted to the 

 wall. Against it hawthorn bushes have grown up at 

 intervals, and in the course of years their trunks have 

 become almost timber. Ivy has risen round some of 

 these, and, connecting them with the wall, gives them 

 at a distance the appearance of green bastions. Large 

 stems of ivy, too, have flattened themselves upon the 

 wall, as if with arched back they were striving like athletes 

 to overthrow it. Mosses, brown in summer, soft green 

 in winter, cover it where there is shadow, and if pulled 

 up take with them some of the substance of the stone or 

 mortar like a crust. A dry, dusty fern may perhaps be 

 found now and then on the low bank at the foot — a fern 

 that would rather be within the park than thus open to 

 the heated south with the wall reflecting the sunshine 

 behind. On the other side of the road, over the thin 

 hedge, there is a broad plain of corn-fields. Coming 

 from these the labourers have found out, or made, notches 

 in the wall ; so that, by putting the iron-plated toes of 

 their boots in, and holding to the ivy, they can scale it 

 and shorten their long trudge home to the village. In 

 the spring the larks, passing from the green corn to the 

 pasture within, fluttering over with gently vibrating 



wings and singing as they daintily go, sometimes settle 



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