Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/37

 INTRODUCTION xxxiii ������they could speak they would probably tell us of forest chases in the time of Alfred the Great, if not of Egbert, the first king of Eng- land, who ascended the throne in 827 We pass through �hills, slopes, undulations, and levels, which, with their ancient timber and high fern, form the very ideal of an ancestral park of the ancient noblesse. Here and there through the Park are stumps of trees that were flourishing before Duke William of Normandy �became William I. of England The ride through the woods �on a sultry day is most delightful ; the complete shelter and obscured sky, the brown carpet of dried beech -leaves and beech-husks, the startling of the deer, the voices of nature, the absence of any sight or sound to indicate that one is in a country of human beings combining to add a charm of repose and of poetic seclusion. The church of St. Cosmos and the embattled tower and beacon turret of the church are very ancient. In this churchyard is a yew, old in the time of William the Conqueror. This church stands in a lovely spot surrounded by greenery where no sound �reaches it but the voices of birds and occasional animals At �Challocks Church bottom formerly stood the straight oak which, because of its shape and colossal proportions, was worth more than 100 for the timber there was in it. A former Lord Winchilsea �refused that sum for it The Star Walk is still traceable but �much overgrown Mt. Pleasant is a circular eminence sur- rounded by ancient yew trees standing at intervals as solitary sen- tinels. From this point the view is remarkable. At our back is the wooded park with its undulations, its mansion, gardens and lake, with the tower of Eastwell church peeping up through the trees. On our left the horizon line is formed by Wye church and Wye Downs. Spread out before us are villages, parks, county seats, hop gardens, fruit gardens, orchards, cornfields, woods, plantations and meadows. In the distance we descry the coast town of Hy the, and on a clear day we may see the English channel with its passing shipping. �The majesty and dream-like loveliness of this park could not have been less in the seventeenth century. Lady Win- chilsea says of it: �And now whenever I contemplate the several beautys of this Park, allow'd to be (if not of the Universal yett) of our British World infinitely the finest, ��� �