CHAPTER II.

Truly saith the proverb, "Much corn lies under the straw that is not
seen."

Meanwhile George Morley followed the long shady walk,--very handsome
walk, full of prize roses and rare exotics, artificially winding too,
--walk so well kept that it took thirty-four men to keep it,--noble walk,
tiresome walk, till it brought him to the great piece of water, which,
perhaps, four times in the year was visited by the great folks in the
Great House. And being thus out of the immediate patronage of fashion,
the great piece of water really looked natural, companionable,
refreshing: you began to breathe; to unbutton your waistcoat, loosen your
neckeloth, quote Chaucer, if you could recollect him, or Cowper, or
Shakspeare, or Thomson's "Seasons;" in short, any scraps of verse that
came into your head,--as your feet grew joyously entangled with fern; as
the trees grouped forest-like before and round you; trees which there,
being out of sight, were allowed to grow too old to be worth five
shillings a piece, moss-grown, hollow-trunked, some pollarded,--trees
invaluable! Ha, the hare! How she scuds! See, the deer marching down
to the water side. What groves of bulrushes! islands of water-lily! And
to throw a Gothic bridge there, bring a great gravel road over the
bridge! Oh, shame, shame!

So would have said the scholar, for he had a true sentiment for Nature,
if the bridge had not clean gone out of his head. Wandering alone, he
came at last to the most umbrageous and sequestered bank of the wide
water, closed round on every side by brushwood, or still, patriarchal