Shakespeare’s Country
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The traveller who would enter into the full charm of “Shakspere’s country” is recommended to start from the quaint and ancient city of Coventry, and to pursue the high road to Warwick, taking Kenilworth in his way. There is scarcely a walk in England more perfect in its own kind of beauty than the five miles from Coventry to Kenilworth. A wide, well-kept road follows, almost in a straight line, the undulations of the hills. Soon after leaving the city, a broad, flower-enamelled coppice, open to the road, is reached; then the hedgerows are flanked on both sides with noble elms, forming a stately avenue, through which glimpses are ever and anon obtained of purple wood-crested hills in the distance. Broad rolling pastures, and cornfields, rich in promise, stretch away on either hand; the grassy road-side and high hedge-banks, showing the deep red subsoil of the sandstone, or variegated clays of the red marls, are bright with wild flowers, and the air is musical with the song of birds. Travellers are few; the railway scream in the distance, to the left, suggests that all who are in a hurry to reach their destination have taken another route; if it be holiday time, parties of young men on Coventry bicycles are sure to flash past; but it is our delight to linger and enjoy. We are, as Thomas Fuller says, in the “Medi-terranean” part of England; and English scenery nowhere displays a more characteristic charm.