Page:Letters from England.djvu/19

 The English Park

HE trees are perhaps the most beautiful things in England. Of course the meadows and the policemen too, but chiefly the trees, splendidly broad shouldered, ancient, generous, free, venerable, vast trees. Trees of Hampton Court, Richmond Park, Windsor, and I know not where else besides. It is possible that these trees have a great influence on Toryism in England. I think they preserve the aristocratic instincts, the historical sense. Conservatism, tariffs, golf, the House of Lords, and other odd and antique things. I should probably be a rabid Radical if I lived in the Street of the Iron Balconies or in the Street of the Grey Bricks; but sitting under an ancient oak tree in the park at Hampton Court I was seriously tempted to acknowledge the