COUNTRY LIFE
THE other day I was shown some charming water colours and sketches by Adam and Repton of a fine country house. This week I walked up to the house and found the beautiful ceilings in pieces on the lawn, the windows suggestive of the eye sockets of a skeleton and the grimness of a demolished home everywhere. A singularly pleasant path through a belt of trees was scarcely passable. After the best trees had been felled much of the " lop and top " had been left and was overgrown with weeds, especially nettles. Not content with " the beauty's ruin and the life's defeat " the iconoclasts libelled the thing they had destroyed. One excuse given was that the house was "a Victorian fake." Fine specimens of the work of the historic architects and designers were, it seems, not recognised by the planners of our poor helpless country. A house with a great past and a lovely present had been demolished and further insulted. It is a small thing, but more capable of correction, that a public right of way also was blocked by felled boughs, and further on a pleasant path blotted out by a cinder road. The indignation of the neighbourhood is inexpressible. A gardener said to me: " It makes you cry."
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