Page:Views in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Northamptonshire.djvu/76

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44
DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENERY, &c.

house, as it terminates at a short distance from its beginning.

The View is taken from a rising ground nearly two miles from the Lodge, in the front of which is seen a piece of water containing eighteen acres: in the distance on the left is Bow-Brick Hill, in Buckinghamshire. Near the back of the house two or three noble glades concentrate, which branch out in different directions through the extent of the forest. Bloomfield, who spent some time at the Lodge in August 1800, expresses the particular delight he found in taking a prospect of the country at the extremity of this wood:

Genius of the forest shades.
    Sweet from the heights of thy domain,
When the grey evening shadow fades,
    To view the country's golden grain;
To view the gleaming village spire,
    'Midst distant groves unknown to me,
Groves that, grown bright in borrow'd fire.
    Bow o'er the peopled vales to thee!

This address to the 'Genius of the Forest Shades,' was made near the foot of Wake's Oak. The 'village spire,' is the spire of Hanslop Church, in Northamptonshire, and has since been destroyed