Two parks pre-eminently famous for the magnificence of their oak timber are Keddleston, Lord Scarsdale’s, in Derbyshire, and Bagot’s Park, Lord Bagot’s, in Staffordshire.  The latter, which contains a thousand acres, is a very ancient enclosure.  It contains, besides the deer, a herd of wild goats said to have been presented by Richard II. to an ancestor of the present owner.

Parks vary from a paddock of twenty-one acres to twenty-eight hundred, but the most usual dimensions are from one hundred and fifty to four hundred acres.  For a multum in parvo of beautiful park scenery the traveler in search of these charming specimens of the picturesque may be advised to take a tour in Herefordshire and Worcestershire; and if he be a horseman he will do well to ride through the country.  “Anyone,” says Mr. Shirley, “who ascends the steep crest of the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, and looks down from the summit of the ridge on the western side of the hills upon the richly wooded and beautifully undulating country which lies stretched beneath as far as the mountains of South Wales, would at once be struck with the ‘bosky’ nature of the scenery, and its perfect adaptation for the formation of deer-parks and sylvan residences.”

Grimsthorpe, Lady Aveland’s (inherited from the dukes of Ancaster, extinct); Thoresby, Earl Manvers’s, formerly the duke of Kingston’s, father of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and Knowsley, Lord Derby’s, are also very large parks.

A writer on Grimsthorpe in 1774 says:  “On a former visit I was told that the park was sixteen miles and three quarters in circumference, and esteemed the largest in England:  since then it has, nevertheless, been somewhat enlarged, but different spots in it are cultivated.”

A few parks have been created and others restocked during the present century.  In Norfolk, Lord Kimberley, the present secretary of state for the colonies, has restored the deer which were removed during the present century, saying, it is reported, that “a place is not a place without deer”—­a sentiment shared by many of his countrymen regarding an ancient grand-seigneur home.  In the same county a new park has been created at Sandringham, the seat of the prince of Wales, the deer having been brought from Windsor.  Sandringham Park and Woods were half a century ago a sandy waste, but fell into judicious hands and were admirably planted.  The modern history of the place is remarkable.  Toward the close of the century it became the property of a French refugee, Mr. Matou.  This gentleman having been driven from his native country by the Revolution, conceived somehow the idea of importing from Sicily immense quantities of rabbit skins, which were used for making hats of a cheap kind which passed for beaver.  In this way he acquired a large fortune.  In England he mixed in the best society, and became very intimate with Earl Cowper, first husband of the well-known Lady Palmerston, and at his death bequeathed Sandringham