3-071-074 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A Place for a Picnic, 1881. 'On a warm summer day...this would be the place, in the rocky channel of a stream diminished by the cessation of rain, to sit and cat the sandwich or the sausage-roll of idyllic contentment, with or without a bottle of champagne. The crystal purity of the flowing water, in these natural basins of stone, requires no vinous or spirituous addition to its refreshing and exhilarating qualities; and the sweet moorland air, that passes freely through the light covert of this piece of woodland, will not be improved by the fumes of a cigar...To desist from talking, from forced or affected listening, from reading and writing, and from all the tricks and artifices of worldly society, though but for an hour after luncheon on the banks of a woodland stream, is the best restorative for a jaded mind; and its effect is more wholesome, shared with one or two persons who are trusted and beloved, than in solitude and separation from all our kind'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.