“Carolus Rex.”
Volume One—Chapter Twenty One.
The traveller, journeying among the Chiltern Hills, will often find himself on the summit of a ridge, that sweeping round upon itself, encloses a deep basin-like valley, of circular shape.
Many of these natural concavities are of considerable size—having a superficial extent of several hundreds of acres. Often a farm homestead may be seen nestling within their sheltered limits; and not unfrequently a noble mansion, surrounded by green pastures—these again bordered by a belt of forest trees, cresting the summit of the surrounding ridge,—the whole appearing like some landscape picture, set in a circular frame.
Such a picture was presented in the valley of Stone Dean: a fair mansion in the centre of a smiling park, with a rustic framework of beechen forest, coping the hills that encircled it.
The day was when the park and mansion of Stone Dean may have been kept in better repair. At the period of which we write, about both was visible an air of neglect—like a painting that has hung unheeded against the wall, till tarnished by dust and time.
Both dwelling and outbuildings exhibited evidence of decay, and but little sign of occupation. But for the smoke rising out of one of its tottering chimneys—and this not always to be seen—one viewing the house from the ridge above, would have come to the conclusion that it was uninhabited. The shrubbery had become transformed into a thicket; the pastures, overgrown with gorse, genista, and bramble, more resembled a waste than a park enclosure; while the horned cattle wandering over them, appeared as wild as the deer browsing by their side; and, when startled by the step of the intruder, were equally alert in seeking the concealment of the surrounding forest.
Neither domesticated quadruped, nor bird appeared about the walls or within the enclosures; where a human voice was rarely heard to interrupt the shrill screech of the jay from the bordering woods, the clear piping of the blackbird amid the neglected shrubbery, and the monotonous cawing of the rooks upon the tops of the tall elm trees, that, holding hundreds of their nests, darkly overshadowed the dwelling.