London to John O 1 Groat's. 57 



them, so large fields are swallowing these interesting 

 patches, the broad-bottomed hedging of which some- 

 times measures as many square yards as tha space it 

 encloses. 



There is much reason to fear that the hedge trees 

 will, in the end, meet with a worse fate still. Prac- 

 tical farmers are beginning to look upon them with an 

 evil eye an eye sharp and severe with pecuniary specu- 

 lation; that looks at an oak or elm with no artist's 

 reverence ; that darts a hard, dry, timber-estimating 

 glance at the trunk and branches; that looks at the 

 circumference of its cold shadow on the earth beneath, 

 not at the grand contour and glorious leafage of its 

 boughs above. The farmer who was taking us over 

 his large and highly-cultivated fields, was a man of wide 

 intelligence, of excellent tastes, and the means where- 

 withal to give them free scope and play. His library 

 would have satisfied the ambition of a student of history 

 or belles lettres. His gardens, lawn, shrubbery, and 

 flowers would grace the mansion of an independent 

 gentleman. He had an eye to the picturesque as well 

 as practical. But I could not but notice, as significant 

 of the tendency to which I have referred, that, on pass- 

 ing a large, outbranching oak standing in the boundary 

 of two fields, he remarked that the detriment of its 

 shadow could not have been less than ten shillings a 



