In a picturesque, but little-known district in Queen’s County, Ireland,
lies Abbey Leix, the residence of Lord de Vesci. It is a land of
vigorous tree-growth and general richness of vegetation. Hedge-rows show
an abundance of well-grown ash timber, and the park is full of fine
oaks, a thing that is rare in Ireland, and that makes it more like
English parkland of the best character. This impression is accentuated
in spring-time when the oaks are carpeted with the blue of wild
Hyacinths, and when the broad woodland rides are also rivers of the same
Blue-bells.
In this favoured land the common Laurel is a beautiful tree, thirty feet
high; the mildness of the winter climate allowing it to grow unchecked.
Only those who have seen it in tree form in the best climates of our
islands, or in Southern Europe, know the true nature of the Laurel’s
growth, or the poetry and mystery of its moods and aspects. The long
grey limbs shoot upward and bend and arch in a manner almost fantastic.
Sometimes a stem will incline downwards and run along the ground,
followed by another. In the evening half-light they might be giant
silver-scaled serpents, writhing and twisting and then springing aloft
and becoming lost to sight in the dim masses of the crowning foliage.
Seen thus one can hardly reconcile its identity with that of the poor,
tamed, often-clipped bush of every garden. The Laurel is so docile, so
easily coerced to the making of a quickly-grown hedge or useful screen,
that its better qualities as an unmutilated tree in a mild district are
usually lost sight of.
The house at Abbey Leix is a stone building of classical design of the
middle of the eighteenth century. On the northern front is the entrance
[Illustration: ABBEY-LEIX