Entering by a gate near the old corn-mill we struck across the park in an easterly direction and soon reached the edge of the wood, from which there is a good view of the hall and the old deer house, with the mere in front, feathered down almost to the water's edge with stately trees. The wilder parts of the grounds are alive with rabbits, and as we strode over the green sward they started up from the fern and the thick grass and scampered off to their warrens in all directions; but no other sign of life was visible, and, save that now and then we could hear the distant croaking of the corn-crake and the thrush chanting a requiem to the departing day from a neighbouring copse, even the birds seemed to have sunk to rest in their foliaged homes. The woods were in the fulness of their summer verdure, displaying a thousand varied tints of green and yellow; to the right we could see the great plain of Cheshire stretching away towards the Frodsham hills and the estuary of the Dee, the green meadow-breadths looking almost golden in the sunset sheen. A warm aërial haze suffused itself over the landscape, softening into beauty every object; the breeze which so lately frolicked through the trees had died away, and the wide mere lay spread before us calm, and still, and bright as a mirror, while its surface, unruffled by a single ripple, gave back with wonderful minuteness the outline of the plumy woods, the amber radiance of the sky, and the moving forms of the reeds and water flags that fringe its margin; the effect being heightened as now and then a shaft of ruddy light quivered through the foliage and shed an almost unearthly splendour upon the water. No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest. That scene has been so exquisitely described in the "Journal" of Catherine Stanley that we are tempted to transcribe it:--