THE END OF THE FARM 251 



bracken, blackberry and raspberry, and the finest grasses. 

 Faint and far off the returning partridges called on their 

 way to &quot; jug &quot; in the rough grass. The sale of the farm 

 was a little event hardly disturbing a scene of continuous 

 and most English beauty. 



6, 



There is a vale in Devon lovelier &quot; than all the valleys 

 of Ionian hills/ though not many people see it or even 

 know of it ; for in that delectable country the dips are 

 often so sudden and unexpected that they seem to be 

 incidents of the country like its birds and beasts. You 

 could shoot a rifle, you could almost shoot an arrow, from 

 the wood that clothes the western side to the grove and 

 house that adorn the eastern : strange legends are pre 

 served of the wreckers and robbers who long since lay 

 hid in this surprising pucker in the landscape. The 

 house is Georgian, but the outhouses are several cen 

 turies older, and the stock within look out between the 

 stone tracery of what was once, no doubt, a private 

 chapel. Some day the valley will be put into the posses 

 sion of the National Trust ; and since England is full of 

 places that seem to their owners the most desirable in the 

 world, this beneficent Trust promises to be one of the 

 greatest of all landowners. 



Mere beauty is perhaps enough, but a &quot; place within 

 the meaning; of the act,&quot; the act of bestowal, should have 

 some special distinction. The distinction of this is, to 

 my taste, its ravens and its buzzards, though other dis 

 tinction would be found by archaeologists. One wood 

 is &quot; Chapel Wood/* and you may emphasise which word 

 of the two you will. Every year the buzzards build there 

 and every year the ravens, sometimes one pair of each, 



