Nature still garlanded this suburban part of London with bowery spaces breathing peace. The view of the region from Herne Hill over softly wreathing dis tances of domestic wood was, before railroads came, entirely lovely, Ruskin says. He writes of the tops of twenty square miles of politely inhabited groves,' of bloom of lilac and laburnum and of almond-blos soms, intermingling suggestions of the wealth of fi'nit trees in enclosed gardens, and companioning all this with the furze, birch, oak, and bramble of the Nor wood hills, and the open fields of Dulwich animate with cow and buttercup.