The late Lord Abergavenny, a man of very shy and retiring disposition, was the least liberal park-owner in England.  The gates of his superb demesne of Eridge very rarely revolved on their hinges; and this was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he did not reside there more than three months in the year.  The story was told that at his accession to the property he had been more liberal, but that one day he was seated at luncheon alone when, suddenly looking up, he observed to his horror three proletarians flattening their noses against the window-pane, and gaping with exasperating interest at the august spectacle of a live lord at luncheon.  To pull the bell and issue an order for the immediate removal of the intruders was, in the graphic language of the dime novel, the work of a moment; and from that hour the gates of Eridge were so rigorously sealed that it was often a matter of difficulty even for invited guests to obtain admittance.

It may seem very ill-natured sometimes to refuse admittance on easy terms to such places, and to act apparently in a sort of dog-in-the-manger spirit.  But it should be borne in mind that the privilege when accorded has not unfrequently been abused, more especially by the “lower middle class” of the English people, whose manners are often very intrusive.  Such persons will approach close to the house, peer into the windows of private apartments, or push in amongst the family and guests while engaged in croquet or other out-door amusements.  Another common offence is leaving a disgusting debris lying about after a picnic in grounds which it costs the owners thousands of pounds yearly to keep in order.  The sentiment from which such places are kept up is not that of vulgar display.  They are hallowed by associations which are well depicted by the late Lord Lytton in an eloquent passage in Earnest Maltravers: 

“It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English parks at midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and valley, its never-innovated and mossy grass overrun with fern, and its immemorial trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet upon the graves, of a hundred generations.  Such spots are the last proud and melancholy trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left to the laughing landscapes of cultivated England.  They always throw something of shadow and solemn gloom upon minds that feel their associations, like that which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice.  They are the cathedral aisles of Nature, with their darkened vistas, and columned trunks, and arches of mighty foliage.  But in ordinary times the gloom is pleasing, and more delightful than all the cheerful lawns and sunny slopes of the modern taste.”

REGINALD WYNFORD.

[Footnote 1:  This was the famous Charlotte de la Tremouille, so admirably portrayed by Scott in Peveril of the Peak.  Her direct male heirs terminated in her grandson, the tenth earl, and she is now represented in the female line by the duke of Atholl, who through her claims descent from the Greek emperors.]