AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK. 309 
happily the place escaped notice in that artificial era 
when half the parks and woods were spoiled to make 
‘the engraver’s ideal landscape of straight vistas, broad 
in the foreground and narrowing up to nothing. Wide, 
straight roads—you can call them nothing else—were 
cut through the finest woods, so that upon looking from 
a certain window, or standing at a certain spot in the 
grounds, you might see a church tower at the end of 
the cutting, In some parks there are half a dozen such 
“horrors shown to you as a great curiosity ; some have a 
monument or pillar at the end. These hideous dis- 
figurements of beautiful scenery should surely be wiped 
out in our day. The stiff, straight cutting could soon 
be filled up by planting, and after a time the woods 
would resume their natural condition. Many common 
highway roads are really delightful, winding through 
trees and hedgerows, with glimpses of hills and distant 
villages. But these planned, straight vistas, radiating 
from a central spot as if done with ruler and pen, at 
once destroy the pleasant illusion of primeval forest. 
You may be dreaming under the oaks of the chase or 
of Rosalind: the moment you enter such a vista all 
becomes commonplace. Happily this park escaped, 
and it is beautiful. Our English landscape wants no 
gardening: it cannot be gardened. The least inter- 
ference kills it. The beauty of English woodland and 
country is in its detail. There is nothing empty and 
Unclothed. If the clods are left a little while undis- 
turbed in the fields, weeds spring up and wild-flowers 
bloom upon them. Is the hedge cut and trimmed, lo! 
the bluebells flower the more and a yet fresher green 
buds forth upon the twigs. Never was there a garden 
like the meadow : there is not an inch of the meadow 
in early summer without a flower. Old walls, as we 
