" EAKTH "-STOPPING. 69 



the charm that Nature delights to throw over every 

 thing in proper turn and place. The waving and 

 extensive Corn-field, the deep rich verdure of the 

 green crop, the dark and mellow surface of the 

 turned-up soil, owe little of beauty to the net-work 

 of intersecting barriers that arrest at once the 

 plough and the prospect, and carry a running nest 

 of robbers, like earth-works of the enemy, through 

 the fair fields of human skill and labor, and sacri- 

 fice at once the food of man and the profit of the 

 grower. 



It is the eye of Prejudice, not of Taste, that sees 

 Beauty absent from Utility. Even in the flattest 

 districts, even upon the "Clay Farm" itself, there 

 is an undulating outline, a morsel of the varied 

 profile of our mother earth which never revealed 

 itself to the eye until those impediments were 

 abolished, which like Ignorance make us mis- 



/ o 



take for a dull, straight line, that whicli is only 

 a part of THE GREAT CIRCLE.* 



* It is easy to perceive that our author is a thorough 

 utilitarian, and that the classical and time-honored associa- 

 tions of English hedgerows, with their equally time-endured 

 nuisances of waste, vermin, game, and their attendant vexa- 

 tions to the husbandman, meet with little favor at his hands. 

 It is surprising to an American, to what extent the English 



