A Hertfordshire Valley. 13 



and fresh country air. Rickmansworth Park is to the right, 

 with its cool shady avenues and grand forest trees, and 

 there is rolling upland to the left, stretching away in well- 

 cultivated undulations towards Royal Windsor. 



A July drive along this route lives bright in my memory. 

 It had rained hard during the morning, and the sun had, as 

 if in a fit of sulkiness, refused to show himself for the re- 

 mainder of the day, though the showers had ceased. Nature 

 was therefore in tears, but tears which disfigure human 

 beings become the hedgerows and grassy banks, cornfields 

 and tree-branches. In the glittering drops which gently 

 hung upon the leaves there was no trace of grief or sadness, 

 but rather a suggestion of joy and infinite content. How, 

 too, the birds warbled on every hand, piping in all the 

 bushes, answering each other in the tree-tops and making 

 the woods jubilant with song ! And what woods they were ! 

 I saw them on the return journey next day, mottled with 

 the gold of a fierce sunshine, but now they were clothed in 

 sober mood that accorded well with their stateliness. 



Towards Lowdwater the trees are very fine, and their 

 naturally noble aspect is heightened by an abundant ad- 

 mixture of larch, Scotch and other firs. Shapely beeches 

 (not that the beech is ever other than shapely), lofty elms, 

 sturdy oaks, showy chestnuts, lift up their heads, rising with 

 the ground from the little river and covering the opposite 

 slope with a mass of variegated foliage. 



Sometimes you forget the woods in the nearer objects — 

 in the flowering vetch, in the waving corn, bright with 

 scarlet poppy-heads, the blue blossoms of the succory (so 

 often mistaken for the corn-flower proper), and the modest 

 little lesser bindweed, that, entwined and nestled among the 

 stalks, makes bold in the absence of sun-glare to open its 

 sweet countenance. To many a cornfield is a cornfield, 



