WAY-SIDE HINTS 



ably, and well, by arranging— in concert with 

 the railway officials— an easily graded slope 

 upon either side of the cutting, which, by a 

 few simple dressings, shall be brought into a 

 grassy surface— telling a good story for the 

 flats above, and showing upon their extreme 

 height a skirting hedge-row or coppice, or pos- 

 sibly the trellis of some rustic paling, bloom- 

 ing with flowers, and (if convenience of path- 

 way require it) stretching upon either side of 

 a bridgelet across the chasm of the road. 

 Even where such cutting is through cliff, noth- 

 ing is to forbid the dressing of the higher 

 ledges with a few crimson bunches of colum- 

 bines, to nod their heads between the eye of 

 the traveller and the sky, and make good re- 

 port, from their little corners, of the people 

 whose every-day walk skirts the cliffs. If a 

 gradual slope, or terraces, are admissible by 

 the nature of the cutting, it is a question if 

 these may not be made to carry their parterres 

 of flowers, or of blooming shrubs, to give 

 charm to the borders of an estate. I have 

 somewhere seen such slope, whereon an ad- 

 venturous nurseryman had given advertise- 

 ment of his name and calling by an ingenious 

 arrangement of his box-borders in gigantic 

 lettering— not, perhaps, a very legitimate rural 



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