JOUENAL OF RURAL ART AM) RURAL TASTE. 



Vol. I. 



FEBRUARY, 1S47. 



No. 8. 



" There was a certain householder which 

 planted a vineyard, and hedged it round 

 about." What better proof can we give, 

 than this sacred and familiar passage, of the 

 antiquity, as well as the wisdom, of making 

 hedo-es. But indeed the custom is older 

 than the christian era. Homer tells us that 

 when Ulysses, after his great deeds, return- 

 ed to seek his father Laertes, he found the 

 old king in his garden, preparing the ground 

 for a hedge, while his servants were absent, 

 " To search the woods for sets of flowery thorn. 

 Their orchard bounds to strengthen and adorn." 

 Pope's Odessey. 



The lapse of 3000 years has not taught 

 the husbandman or the owners of orchards 

 and gardens, in modern times, any fairer or 

 better mode of enclosing their lands, than 

 this most natural and simple one of hedging 

 it round about. Fences of iron or wood, 

 carefully fashioned by art, are fitting and ap- 

 propriate in their proper places — that is, in 

 the midst of houses and great cities — but in 

 the open, free expanse of country landscape, 

 the most costly artificial barrier looks hard 

 and incongruous beside the pleasant verdure 

 of a live hedge. 



Necessity, it is often said, knows no law, 



and the emigrant settler on new lands, where 

 44 



stone and timber are so abundant as to be 

 the chief obstacles to the progress of his 

 labors on the soil, must needs employ for a 

 long time, rail fences, board fences, and 

 stone walls. But in most of the Atlantic 

 states these materials are already becoming 

 so scarce, that hedges will soon be the most 

 economical mode of enclosing grounds. In 

 the Prairie lands of the west, hedges must 

 also, from the original and prospective scar- 

 city of timber, soon be largely resorted to for 

 all 'pej-manently divided grounds — such as 

 gardens and orchards. 



Touching the charms which a good hedge 

 has for the eye, they are so striking, and so 

 self-evident, that our readers hardly need 

 any elaborate inventory from us. That 

 clever and extraordinary man, William 

 Cobbett, who wrote books on gardening, 

 French grammar and political economy, 

 with equal success, said, in his usual em- 

 phatic manner, " as to the beauty of a fine 

 hedge, it is impossible for any one who has 

 not seen it, to form an idea ; contrasted with 

 a wooden, or even a brick fence, it is like 

 the land of Canaan compared loith the deserts 

 of Arabia r' 



The advantages of a hedge over a com- 

 mon fence, besides its beauty, are its dura- 



