64 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



that, beautiful as the country is, with its green 

 meadows and graceful trees, its streams and forests 

 and peaceful homesteads, it would be difficult to find 

 an acre of ground that has not been stained with 

 blood. A melancholy reflection this, that carries the 

 mind backwards, while the thrush sings on the bough, 

 through the nameless skirmishes of the Civil War, 

 the cruel assassinations of the rival Roses, down to 

 the axes of the Saxons and the ghastly wounds they 

 made. Everywhere under the flowers are the dead. 



Not this park in particular, but others as well 

 form pages of history. The keeper, in fact, can 

 claim an ancient origin for his office, dating back to 

 the forester with a ' mark ■ a year and a suit of green 

 as his wages, and numbering in his predecessors 

 Joscelin, the typical keeper in Scott's novel of 

 ' Woodstock,' who aided the escape of King Charles. 

 Ever since the days of the Norman King who loved 

 the tall deer as if he were their father — in the words 

 of his contemporary — and set store by the hares that 

 they too should go free, the keeper has not ceased 

 out of the land. 



There are always more small birds at the edge or 

 just outside a wood than inside it ; so that after 

 leaving a meadow with blackbird, thrush, and finches 

 merry in the hedges, the wood seems quite silent and 



