58 A Walk from 



year for half a century. As we proceeded from field to 

 field, he recurred to the same subject by calling our 

 attention to the circumference of the shadow cast on 

 the best land of the farm by a thrifty, luxuriant ash, 

 not more than a foot in diameter at the butt. Up to 

 the broad rim of its shade, the wheat on each side of 

 the hedge was thick, heavy-headed and tall, but within 

 the cool and sunless circle the grain and grass were so 

 pale and sickly that the bare earth would have been 

 relief to a farmer's eye. 



The three great, distinctive graces of an English 

 landscape are the hawthorn hedges, the hedge-row 

 trees, and the everlasting and unapproachable greeness 

 of the grass-fields they surround and embellish. In 

 these beautiful features, England surpasses all other 

 countries in the world. These make the peculiar charm 

 of her rural scenery to a traveller from abroad. These 

 are the salient lineaments of Motherland's face which 

 the memories of myriads she has sent to people 

 countries beyond the sea cling to with such fondness ; 

 memories that are transmitted from generation to 

 generation; which no political revolutions nor sever- 

 ances affect ; which are handed down in the unwritten 

 legends of family life in the New World, as well as in 

 the warp and woof of American literature and history. 

 "Will the utilitarian and unsparing science of these 



