A carriage-drive was visible on the other side of the gate, but its
boundaries were half obliterated by the grass and weeds that had grown
over it, and as it wound down into the glen it was lost among the trees.
Nature, before it has been touched by man, is almost always beautiful,
strong, and cheerful in man's eyes; but nature, when he has once given
it his culture and then forsaken it, has usually an air of sorrow and
helplessness. He has made it live the more by laying his hand upon it,
and touching it with his life. It has come to relish of his humanity,
and it is so flavoured with his thoughts, and ordered and permeated by
his spirit, that if the stimulus of his presence is withdrawn it cannot
for a long while do without him, and live for itself as fully and as
well as it did before.

There was nothing to prevent a stranger from entering this place, and if
he did so, its meaning very soon took hold of him; he perceived that he
had walked into the world of some who were courting oblivion, steeping
themselves in solitude, tempting their very woods to encroach upon them,
and so swathe them as in a mantle of secrecy which might cover their
misfortunes, and win forgetfulness both for their faults and for their
decline.

The glen was about three hundred yards across, and the trees which
crowded it, and overflowed its steep side encroaching over the flat
ground beyond, were chiefly maples and sycamores. Every sunbeam that
shot in served to show its desolation. The place was encumbered with
fallen branches, tangled brushwood, dead ferns; and wherever the little
stream had spread itself there was a boggy hollow, rank with bulrushes,
and glorious with the starry marsh marigold. But here and there dead
trees stood upright, gaunt and white in their places, great swathes of