A Sylvan Sanctum. 137 



creepers, climbing roses, japonicas, with their faint-red 

 flowers in early spring, and, most notable of all, a 

 lovely magnolia-tree, and a greeny double pomegranate, 

 with scarlet blossom in its season, cover the walls and 

 relieve the harshness of outline seen from whatever 

 point of view; and it gathers its little lawns and 

 rosaries and flower-beds close about it, half-way round 

 it, with shrubberies skirting the outline of these, bright 

 with soft, pink, feathery sumachs, ornamental pines of 

 many kinds — the Glaucus pine among them, with its 

 greeny-frosty fringes, peculiarly beautiful — the Judas 

 tree, the Glastonbury thorn, so rich and rare, or some- 

 thing very closely allied to it, with spikes on the 

 branches an inch and a quarter long, and hedges of 

 varicoloured rhododendrons. 



This forms a kind of inner enclosure or sylvan 

 sanctum, through which the farther ground opens up to 

 you in delightful vistas as you look or go from point to 

 point ; and from this inner sanctum, at any part, you 

 step at once into the little park of which I have spoken. 



On the other side of the road, quite separated from 

 this, lies the main vegetable and fruit garden, with 

 lofty hedges and stone walls for wall-fruit all round it, 

 save, indeed, on the far side, where it gives into a 

 paddock more useful and less ornamental than the 

 park, with which we are more particularly concerned, 

 though it too has some fine trees around it, and one or 

 two within it, on the strong branches of which swings 

 can be placed for the children at merry-making or 

 school-treat; and in one corner there is a pond, ex- 

 quisitely closed in with chestnuts and other trees, in 

 which a duck will be seen now and then delectating itself. 



Round the extreme limit of the park are stately trees 

 of many kinds : beeches, smooth and velvety of bole, 



