In this beautiful, evocative, relaxing description, the key elements are: first, a feeling of living nature; second, a mixture of light and shadow; third, the sense of venerable age; and, finally, the fact that she is is looking down (literally) on servants and feeling explicitly like a ruler. All this represents Mrs Gould in her decidely anti-progress ideal of altruism, with its love of the natural, ancient and picturesque, and its subtle requirements of both illusion (the shade) and social hierarchy.