His Path Now Led For A While Just Inside The Pale, Which Here Divided
The Forest From The Meadows.
In the olden time it would have been made of
oak, for they built all things then with an eye to endurance; but it was
now of fir, pitched, sawn from firs thrown in the copses.
For the purpose
of keeping the deer in, it was as useful as the pale of oak. Oak is not
so plentiful nowadays. The high spars were the especial vaunting-places
of the little brown wrens which perched there and sang, in defiance of
all that the forest might hold. Rabbits crept under, but the hares waited
till evening and went round by the gates. Presently the path turned and
the squire passed a pond partly dried up, from the margin of which
several pigeons rose up, clattering their wings. They are fond of the
neighbourhood of water, and are sure to be there some time during the
day. The path went upwards, but the ascent was scarcely perceptible
through hazel bushes, which became farther apart and thinner as the
elevation increased, and the soil was less rich. Some hawthorn bushes
succeeded, and from among these he stepped out into the open park.
Nothing could be seen of the manor-house here. It was hidden by the roll
of the ground and the groups of trees. The close sward was already a
little brown - the trampling of hoofs as well as the heat causes the
brownish hue of fed sward, as if it were bruised. He went out into the
park, bearing somewhat to the right and passing many hawthorns, round the
trunks of which the grass was cut away in a ring by the hoofs of animals
seeking shadow. Far away on a rising knoll a herd of deer were lying
under some elms. In front were the downs, a mile or so distant; to the
right, meadows and cornfields, towards which he went. There was no house
nor any habitation in view; in the early part of the year, the
lambing-time, there was a shepherd's hut on wheels in the fields, but it
had been drawn away.
According to tradition, there is no forest in England in which a king has
not hunted. A king, they say, hunted here in the old days of the
cross-bow; but 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.
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