OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



respect, as well as in the removal of many of 

 the hedges which mark the interior divisions of 

 the farms, the border lines, and the way-side 

 still show, every succeeding spring, that won- 

 drous wealth of white hawthorn bloom which 

 is so associated in the thoughts of all with 

 English rural landscape. Not always trim, it 

 is true, are the hawthorn hedges; not without 

 an occasional interlacing of rampant brambles ; 

 not without some stray sapling of other growth 

 cropping out, and lording it over the line of 

 hedge; but gnarled, stiff, strong, waving with 

 the undulations of the hills, twining with the 

 curves of the road-way— unbroken, save by 

 here and there a stile or a cumbrous farm- 

 gate— with a fine spray of interlacing branch- 

 lets from ground to top — white, and noisy with 

 bees in all the season of bloom— green, and 

 wavy, and flowing in the flush of the summer's 

 growth — carrying their red haws through all 

 the early winter, and when the light snows (as 

 they do, rare times) veil the ground, showing 

 their creeping lines of brown up the hills, and 

 athwart the hills, and in soldierly array flank- 

 ing every country by-road. 



When I think of those long billows of green 

 skirting the paths, and look upon my prosaic 

 posts and rails, it seems to me plain enough 



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