button to main menu  Description of Sixty Studies, pp.40-41
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page 40:-
as to be prevented from ever rising into grandeur.
A thick wood, which has been undisturbed for a long time, is uniformly a repetition of the surface on which it stands, and is more unpleasant to the eye than were its produce grass rather then trees; but such woods interrupted alternately by bare fields are uniformly heavy and disgusting.
The cultivated eye requires variety, and will not allow of monotonous repetition, which here, though so generally displayed, would, by the moderate labour of two springs, be entirely destroyed, and so modified as to appear like another country; for the materials for this purpose are chiefly on the spot.
It seems that at some time a road has been intended from Scandale bridge to the hall, chiefly the breadth of a field to the east of the turnpike road; this is a charming track, as it opens finely on the mountains; there is here
page 41:-
to the left, likewise, more of distribution in the trees than from the public road.
Preparatory to the use of the axe, the woods must be carefully examined in order to discover all such trees as, by their stateliness, elegance, or beauty, may eventually give grace to the scenery; and these trees must be so marked as to be distinguished from those which are intended to be cut down. The most interesting points upon the roads and on the land must then be ascertained, by moving in all directions till the objects between the eye and the distance compose in the best order; and as the trees in many situations may obscure various valuable matter, those trees must be marked, as necessary to be removed.
In the woods at Rydal, amongst the deciduous trees there are evergreens of different sorts, but chiefly of the fir tribe; but the number of those ever-
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