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قراءة كتاب The Lost Dahlia
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entrance to the demesne, through a deep dell dark with magnificent firs, from which we emerge into a finely wooded park of the richest verdure, is also striking and impressive. But the distinctive feature of the place (for the mansion, merely a comfortable and convenient nobleman's house, hardly responds to the fame of its owner) is the grand avenue of noble elms, three quarters of a mile long, which leads to the front door.
that my accomplished friend Mrs. Trollope was "raised," as
her friends the Americans would say, upon this spot. Her
father, the Rev. William Milton, himself a very clever man,
and an able mechanician and engineer, held the living of
Heckfield for many years.
It is difficult to imagine anything which more completely realises the poetical fancy, that the pillars and arches of a Gothic cathedral were borrowed from the interlacing of the branches of trees planted at stated intervals, than this avenue, in which Nature has so completely succeeded in outrivalling her handmaiden Art, that not a single trunk, hardly even a bough or a twig, appears to mar the grand regularity of the design as a piece of perspective. No cathedral aisle was ever more perfect; and the effect, under every variety of aspect, the magical light and shadow of the cold white moonshine, the cool green light of a cloudy day, and the glancing sunbeams which pierce through the leafy umbrage in the bright summer noon, are such as no words can convey. Separately considered, each tree (and the north of Hampshire is celebrated for the size and shape of its elms) is a model of stately growth, and they are now just at perfection, probably about a hundred and thirty years old. There is scarcely perhaps in the kingdom such another avenue.
On one side of this noble approach is the garden, where, under the care of the skilful and excellent gardener, Mr. Cooper, so many magnificent dahlias are raised, but where, alas! the Phoebus was not; and between that and the mansion is the sunny, shady paddock, with its rich pasture and its roomy stable, where, for so many years, Copenhagen, the charger who carried the Duke at Waterloo, formed so great an object of attraction to the visiters of Strathfield-saye.* Then came the house itself and then I returned home. Well! this was one beautiful and fruitless drive. The ruins of Reading Abbey formed another as fruitless, and still more beautiful.
Cooper's dahlias after him—a sort of bay dahlia, if I may
be permitted the expression)—Copenhagen was a most
interesting horse. He died last year at the age of twenty-
seven. He was therefore in his prime on the day of Waterloo,
when the duke (then and still a man of iron) rode him for
seventeen hours and a half, without dismounting. When his
Grace got off, he patted him, and the horse kicked, to the
great delight of his brave rider, as it proved that he was
not beaten by that tremendous day's work. After his return,
this paddock was assigned to him, in which he passed the
rest of his life in the most perfect comfort that can be
imagined; fed twice a-day, (latterly upon oats broken for
him,) with a comfortable stable to retire to, and a rich
pasture in which to range. The late amiable duchess used
regularly to feed him with bread, and this kindness had
given him the habit, (especially after her death,) of
approaching every lady with the most confiding familiarity.
He had been a fine animal, of middle size and a chestnut
colour, but latterly he exhibited an interesting specimen of
natural