1858.] THE CLENT HILLS. 391 



consists. The ancient town of Dudley is enveloped in a cloud 

 of smoke, and neither its woods nor its ruins are visible ; Shen- 

 stone's walks and bowers form, with its white cottage-like 

 mansion and its amphitheatre of hills, a very pleasing portion of 

 the landscape. Uffmore's groves are celebrated in the simple 

 verse of Shenstone, from whom the Leasowes have borrowed the 

 poet's name ; and, what is less creditable to posterity, is that the 

 place is still more famous than its very author, who was both a 

 landscape artist and a poet. 



The following quotation from the poet of the Leasowes is 

 ^simple enough, e.g.:^ — 



" Born near the scene for Kenelm's fate renowned, 



I take my plaintive reed, and range the grove ; 

 And raise the lay, and bid the rocks resound 



The savage force of empire and of love. 

 Fast by the centre of you vai-ious wild. 



Where spreading oaks embower a Gothic fane, 

 Kendrida's arts a brother's youth beguiled ; 



Thei'e Nature urged her tenderest ties in vain." 



Happily for Shenstone's fame, his poetical reputation is founded 

 on better lays than that from which the above is quoted. The 

 renown of being the tragical scene on which poor KenelmJ's fate 

 was decided might inspire a lay of a loftier nature than that 

 raised ; but it would be like the " lay, loud as the surge which 

 lashes Lapland's rocky shore," which we remember reading 

 about in the ^ English Bards ' of Lord Byron, if it " bid the 

 rocks resound the savage force," etc. 



The rocks are far distant from Uffmore's groves. If the lay 

 was loud enough to be heard by the rocks, the rocks could not 

 reasonably be expected to render back the lay in any audible 

 sound, much less in articulate Avord. The oaks that embowered 

 the sacred fane have long disappeared, and their place is now 

 supplied by meadows and cornfields. 



The vegetation of this portion of the country — we mean its 

 natural plants, not the cereals, nor agricultural produce, nor the 

 productions of its orchards and gardens, but its wild native 

 growth — is not very striking, neither in itself, nor as charac- 

 teristic of the soil on which it grows. 



The species are neither very numerous nor very interesting to 

 the botanist : to the mere economist they have no interest at all. 



