As we drive we pass by many beautiful establishments, about of the quality of our handsomest country houses, but whose grounds are kept with a precision and exactness rarely to be seen among us.  We cannot get the gardeners who are qualified to do it; and if we could, the painstaking, slow way of proceeding, and the habit of creeping thoroughness, which are necessary to accomplish such results, die out in America.  Nevertheless, such grounds are exceedingly beautiful to look upon, and I was much obliged to the owners of these places for keeping their gates hospitably open, as seems to be the custom here.

After a drive of seven or eight miles, we alighted in front of Speke Hall.  This house is a specimen of the old fortified houses of England, and was once fitted up with a moat and drawbridge, all in approved feudal style.  It was built somewhere about the year 1500.  The sometime moat was now full of smooth, green grass, and the drawbridge no longer remains.

This was the first really old thing that we had seen since our arrival in England.  We came up first to a low, arched, stone door, and knocked with a great old-fashioned knocker; this brought no answer but a treble and bass duet from a couple of dogs inside; so we opened the door, and saw a square court, paved with round stones, and a dark, solitary yew tree in the centre.  Here in England, I think, they have vegetable creations made on purpose to go with old, dusky buildings; and this yew tree is one of them.  It has altogether a most goblin-like, bewitched air, with its dusky black leaves and ragged branches, throwing themselves straight out with odd twists and angular lines, and might put one in mind of an old raven with some of his feathers pulled out, or a black cat with her hair stroked the wrong way, or any other strange, uncanny thing.  Besides this they live almost forever; for when they have grown so old that any respectable tree ought to be thinking of dying, they only take another twist, and so live on another hundred years.  I saw some in England seven hundred years old, and they had grown queerer every century.  It is a species of evergreen, and its leaf resembles our hemlock, only it is longer.  This sprig gives you some idea of its general form.  It is always planted about churches and graveyards; a kind of dismal emblem of immortality.  This sepulchral old tree and the bass and treble dogs were the only occupants of the court.  One of these, a great surly mastiff, barked out of his kennel on one side, and the other, a little wiry terrier, out of his on the opposite side, and both strained on their chains, as if they would enjoy making even more decided demonstrations if they could.

There was an aged, mossy fountain for holy water by the side of the wall, in which some weeds were growing.  A door in the house was soon opened by a decent-looking serving woman, to whom we communicated our desire to see the hall.