Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/450

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Walks in the Black Country

a visit, as many American travellers and tourists have often found to their great satisfaction. I went with Capern, my usual companion in these "Walks," to see it on a delightful April day, when the spring sun shone upon it and its surroundings with its blandest beams. Kenilworth is the nearest railway station, and from that point we made our way across the intervening fields by those endless footpaths which permeate apparently the whole island, as do its branching tendons the surface of an oak leaf. After following these into green-hedged lanes, thence into broad white roads, we came out upon the park gate, and into a full-faced view of the mansion. It is a stately, large, and elegant building, of modern structure and style, such as a block of the same length taken from the Rue Rivoli in Paris, or from the terraces of the west end of London would look if transported and planted in a rural landscape. Thus it does not present those external aspects which make the old Tudor style so prominent and unique, as, for example. Aston Hall, near Birmingham, with its quadrangle of irregular towers, gables, and turrets. But doubtless what is lost in this external picturesqueness of architecture is amply compensated by that capacity of internal grandeur and embellishment which the more modern style of building possesses. The landscape of the park is truly beautiful. The most interesting feature