In the first place, then, I must premise that the name of Ditton-in-the-Dale is in a great measure a misnomer, as the house and estate which bear that name, are situated on what a visiter would be at first inclined to call a dead level, but on what is in truth a small secondary undulation, or hollow, in the broad, flat valley through which the father of the English rivers, the royal-towered Thames, pursues, as Gray sang,
The turf, the flowers, the shades among,
His silver-winding way.
But so destitute is all that country of any deep or well defined valleys, much less abrupt glens or gorges, that any hollow containing a tributary stream, which invariably meanders in slow and sluggish reaches through smooth, green meadow-land, is dignified with the name of dale, or valley. The country is, however, so much intersected by winding lanes, bordered with high straggling white-thorn hedges full of tall timber trees, is subdivided into so many small fields, all enclosed with similar fences, and is diversified with so many woods, and clumps of forest trees, that you lose sight of the monotony of its surface, in consequence of the variety of its vegetation, and of the limited space which the eye can comprehend, at any one time.
The lane by which I was wont to reach the demesne of Ditton, partook in an eminent degree of this character, being very narrow, winding about continually without any apparent cause, almost completely embowered by the tall hawthorn hedges, and the yet taller oaks and ashes which grew along their lines, making, when in full verdure, twilight of noon itself, and commanding no view whatever of the country through which it ran, except when a field-gate, or cart-track opened into it, affording a glimpse of a lonely meadow, bounded, perhaps, by a deep wood-side.
On either hand of this lane was a broad, deep ditch, both of them quite unlike any other ditches I have ever seen. Their banks were irregular; and it would seem evident that they had not been dug for any purposes of fencing or enclosure; and I have sometimes imagined, from their varying width and depth—for in places they were ten feet deep, and three times as broad, and at others but a foot or two across, and containing but a few inches of water—that their beds had been hollowed out to get marl or gravel for the convenience of the neighboring cultivators.
Be this as it may, they were at all times brimful of the clearest and most transparent water I ever remember to have seen—never turbid even after the heaviest rains; and though bordered by water-flags, and tapestried in many places by the broad, round leaves of the white and yellow water-lilies, never corrupted by a particle of floating scum, or green duckweed.
Whether they were fed by secret springs I know not; or whether they communicated by sluices or side-drains with the neighboring Thames; I never could discover any current or motion in their still, glassy waters, though I have wandered by their banks a hundred times, watching the red-finned roach and silvery dace pursue each other among the shadowy lily leaves, now startling a fat yellow frog from the marge, and following him as he dived through the limpid blackness to the very bottom, now starting in my own turn, as a big water-rat would swim from side to side, and vanish in some hole of the marly bank, and now endeavoring to catch the great azure-bodied, gauze-winged dragon-flies, as they shot to and fro on their poised wings, pursuing kites of the insect race, some of the smaller ephemera.
It was those quiet, lucid waters, coupled with the exceeding shadiness of the trees, and its very unusual solitude—I have walked it, I suppose, from end to end at least a hundred times, and I never remember to have met so much even as a peasant returning from his daily labor, or a country maiden tripping to the neighboring town—that gave its character, and I will add, its charm to this half pastoral, half sylvan lane. For nearly three miles it ran in one direction, although, as I have said, with many devious turns, and seemingly unnecessary angles, and through that length it did not pass within the sound of one farm-yard, or the sight of one cottage chimney. But to make up for this, of which it was, indeed, a consequence, the nightingales were so bold and familiar that they might be heard all day long filling the air with their delicious melodies, not waiting, as in more frequented spots, the approach of night, whose dull ear to charm with amorous ravishment; nay, I have seen them perched in full view on the branches, gazing about them fearless with their full black eyes, and swelling their emulous throats in full view of the spectator.
Three miles passed, the lane takes a sudden turn to the northward, having previously run, for the most part, east and west; and here, in the inner angle, jutting out suddenly from a dense thicket of hawthorns and hazels, an old octagonal summer-house, with a roof shaped like an extinguisher, projects into the ditch, which here expands into a little pool, some ten or twelve yards over in every direction, and perhaps deeper than at any other point of its course.
Beyond the summer-house there is a little esplanade of green turf, faced with a low wall toward the ditch, allowing the eye to run down a long, narrow avenue of gigantic elm-trees, meeting at the top in the perfect semblance of a Gothic aisle, and bordered on each hand by hedges of yew, six feet at least in height, clipped into the form and almost into the solidity of a wall. At the far end of this avenue, which must be nearly two-thirds of a mile in length, one can discern a glimpse of a formal garden, and beyond that, of some portion of what seems to be a large building of red brick.