hours, in the fullest radiance of the sunbeams. Over this immense
sloping descent the eye could range from the castle battlements, for
miles and miles, until the rich green champaign was lost in the blue
haze of distance. And it was green and gay over the whole of that vast
expanse, here with the dense and unpruned foliage of immemorial
forests, well stocked with every species of game, from the gaunt wolf
and the tusky boar, to the fleet roebuck and the timid hare; here with
the trim and smiling verdure of rich orchards, in which nestled around
their old, gray shrines the humble hamlets of the happy peasantry; and
every where with the long intersecting curves, and sinuous irregular
lines of the old hawthorn hedges, thick set with pollard trees and
hedgerow timber, which make the whole country, when viewed from a
height, resemble a continuous tract of intermingled glades and
copices, and which have procured for an adjoining district, the well
known, and in after days, far celebrated name of the Bocage.

Immediately around the castle, on the edge as it were of this
beautiful and almost boundless slope, there lay a large and well-kept
garden in the old French style, laid out in a succession of terraces,
bordered by balustrades of marble, adorned at frequent intervals by
urns and statues, and rendered accessible each from the next below by
flights of ornamented steps of regular and easy elevation; pleached
bowery walks, and high clipped hedges of holly, yew and hornbeam, were
the usual decorations of such a garden, and here they abounded to an
extent that would have gladdened the heart of an admirer of the tastes
and habits of the olden time. In addition to these, however, there
were a profusion of flowers of the choicest kinds known or cultivated
in those days--roses and lilies without number, and honeysuckles and
the sweet-scented clematis, climbing in bountiful luxuriance over the
numberless seats and bowers which every where tempted to repose.

Below this beautiful garden a wide expanse of smooth, green turf,
dotted here and there with majestic trees, and at rarer intervals
diversified with tall groves and verdant coppices, covered the whole
descent of the first hill to the dim wooded dell which has been
mentioned as containing the singular cavity known throughout the
country as the "Devil's Drinking Cup." This dell, which was the limit
of Count de St. Renan's demesnes in that direction, was divided from
the park by a