AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK. 
THERE is an old park wall which follows the highway 
in all its turns with such fidelity of curve that for some 
two miles it seems as if the road had been fitted to the 
wall. Against it hawthorn bushes have grown up at 
intervals, and in the course of years their trunks have 
become almost timber. Ivy has risen round some of 
these, and, connecting them with the wall, gives them 
at a distance the appearance of green bastions. Large 
stems of ivy, too, have flattened themselves upon 'the 
wall,as if with arched back they were striving like athletes 
to overthrow it. Mosses, brown in summer, soft green 
in winter, cover it where there is shadow, and if pulled 
uptake with them some of the substance of the stone or 
mortar like a crust. A dry, dusty fern may perhaps be 
found now and then on the low bank at the foot—a fern 
that would rather be within the park than thus open ta 
the heated south with the wall reflecting the sunshine 
behind. On the other side of the road, over the thin 
hedge, there is a broad plain of corn-fields. Coming 
from these the labourers have found out, or made, notches 
in the wall ; so that, by putting the iron-plated toes of 
their boots in, and holding to the ivy, they can scale it 
and shorten their long trudge home to the village. In 
the spring the larks, passing from the green corn to the 
pasture within, fluttering over with gently vibrating 
wings and singing as they daintily go, sometimes settle 
