First impressions of England and its people / By Hugh Miller.

  • Miller, Hugh, 1802-1856.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First impressions of England and its people / By Hugh Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ton grounds: I had but to walk up to the gardener s lodge, and secure the services of one of the under gardeners; and, under his surveillance, I might wander over the place as long as I pleased. At one time, he said, people might enter the park when they willed, without guide or guard; but the pub¬ lic, left to its own discretion, had behaved remarkably ill: it had thrown down the urns, and chipped the obelisks, and scrabbled worse than nonsense on the columns and the trees ; and so it had to be set under a keeper, to insure better be¬ haviour. I succeeded in securing the guidance of one of the gardeners; and, passing with him through part of the garden, and a small but well-kept greenhouse, we emerged into the park, and be¬ gan to ascend the hill by a narrow inartificial path, that winds, in alternate sunshine and shadow, as the trees approach or re¬ cede, through the rich moss of the lawn. Half-way up the ascent, where the hill-side is indented by a deep, irregularly semicircular depression, open and grassy in the bottom and sides, but thickly garnished along the rim with noble trees, there is an octagonal temple, dedicated to the genius of Thom¬ son,—“ a sublime poet,” says the inscription, “ and a good man,” who greatly loved, when living, this hollow retreat. I looked with no little interest on the scenery that had satisfied so great a master of landscape ; and thought, though it might be but fancy, that I succeeded in detecting the secret of his ad¬ miration ; and that the specialties of his taste in the case rest¬ ed, as they not unfrequently do in such cases, on a substratum of personal character. The green hill spreads out its mossy arms around, like the arms of a well-padded easy chair of enormous proportions, imparting, from the complete seclusion and shelter which it affords, luxurious ideas of personal se¬ curity and ease; while the open front permits the eye to ex-