mind the memory of some dark old shrubbery in our northern isle, that has been charmingly un—“kept up” for many and many a day. When you see a rich wilderness of wood in decent England, it is like enough that you see it with some soft regrets. The puzzled old woman at the lodge can give small account of “the family.” She thinks it is “Italy” that has made the whole circle of her world so gloomy and sad. You avoid the house in lively dread of a lone housekeeper, but you make your way on by the stables; you remember that gable with all its neatly nailed trophies of fitchets and hawks and owls, now slowly falling to pieces—you remember that stable, and that—but the doors are all fastened that used to be standing ajar—the paint of things painted is blistered and cracked—grass grows in the yard; just there, in October mornings, the keeper would wait with the dogs and the guns—no keeper now—you hurry away, and gain the small wicket that used to open to the touch of a lightsome hand—it is fastened with a padlock (the only new looking thing), and is stained with thick, green damp—you climb it, and bury yourself in the deep shade, and strive but lazily with the tangling briars, and stop for long minutes to judge and determine whether you will creep beneath the long boughs and make them your archway, or whether perhaps you will lift your heel and tread them down under foot. Long doubt, and scarcely to be ended till you wake from the memory of those days when the path was clear, and chase that phantom of a muslin sleeve that once weighed warm upon your arm.
Wild as that, the nighest woodland of a deserted home in England, but without its sweet sadness, is the sumptuous garden of Damascus. Forest trees, tall and stately enough if you could see their lofty crests, yet lead a tussling life of it below, with their branches struggling against strong numbers of bushes and wilful shrubs. The shade upon the earth is black as night. High, high above your head, and on every side all down to the ground, the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that droop with the weight of roses, and load the slow air with their damask breath.*[1]There are no other flow-
- ↑ *The rose-trees which I saw were all of the kind we call "damask"; they grow to an immense height and size.
