The Kentish Weald
This incident in little had for its setting the diversity and fecundity of the Kentish Weald. Swards mown, rather than postures cropped, by Kentish sheep that also cast splashes of white (as Constable used his palette knife) under the shadowed fruit-trees in tapestried patterns of branching owing to precise pruning and spacing ; the diamond effect of Kentish cobnut-trees ranged in axial diagonals and straight fasciated branches splayed out from the stools ; hop-gardens with their cat's-cradle complex of twine and lines of Gothic oasts ; chestnut coppices in the different stages of their rotation ; neat lines of arable with the viridescent shimmer of the corn-blades ; pieces of natural woodland, small and trim, not as elsewhere foul with dead branches and ungainly growth. This picture of domestic husbandry, combining fruitfulness with aesthetic satisfaction, is the crown of traditional mixed farming.
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