56 A Walk from 



exclaiming, "And how it alters a bird to shoot its 

 feathers off, to be sure!" It would alter England 

 nearly as much in aspect, if the unsparing despotism of 

 s. d. should root out the hedge-row trees, and 

 substitute invisible lines of wire for the flowering 

 hawthorn as a fencing for those fields which now look 

 so much like framed portraits of Nature's best painting. 

 The tendency of these utilitarian times may well 

 occasion an unpleasant concern in the lovers of English 

 rural scenery. What changes may come in the wake 

 of the farmer's steam-engine, steam-plough, or under 

 the smoke-shadows from his factory-like chimney, 

 these recent " improvements " may suggest and induce. 

 One can see in any direction he may travel these changes 

 going on silently. Those little, unique fields, defined 

 by lines and shapes unknown to geometry, are going 

 out of the rural landscape. And when they are gone, 

 they will be missed more than the amateurs of agri- 

 cultural artistry imagine at the present moment. What 

 some one has said of the peasantry, may be said, with 

 almost equal deprecation, of these picturesque tit-bits 

 of land, which, 



" Once destroyed, never can be restored." 



And destroyed they will be, as sure as science. As 

 large farms are swallowing up the little ones between 



