OUTSIDE LONDON. 239 



straight iron railings, unconcealed even by the grasses, 

 which are carefully cut down with the docks and 

 nettles, that do their best, three or four times in the 

 summer, to hide the blank iron. Within these iron 

 railings stands a row of arbor vita, upright, and stiff 

 likewise, and among them a few other evergreens ; 

 and that is all the shelter the lawn and flower-beds 

 have from the east wind, blowing for miles over open 

 country, or from the glowing sun of August. This 

 garden belongs to a gentleman who would certainly 

 spare no moderate expense to improve it, and yet 

 there it remains, the blankest, barest, most miserable- 

 looking square of ground the eye can find ; the only 

 piece of ground from which the eye turns away ; for 

 even the potato-field close by, the common potato- 

 field, had its colour in bright poppies, and there were 

 partridges in it, and at the edges, fine growths of 

 mallow and its mauve flowers. Wild parsley, still 

 green in the shelter of the hazel stoles, is there now 

 on the bank, a thousand times sweeter to the eye than 

 bare iron and cold evergreens. Along that hedge, 

 the white byrony wound itself in the most beautiful 

 manner, completely covering the upper part of the 

 thick brambles, a robe thrown over the bushes ; its 

 deep cut leaves, its countless tendrils, its flowers, and 

 presently the berries, giving pleasure every time one 

 passed it. Indeed, you could not pass without 

 stopping to look at it, and wondering if any one ever 

 so skilful, even those sure-handed Florentines Mr. 

 Kuskin thinks so much of, could ever draw that 

 intertangled mass of lines. Nor could you easily draw 

 the leaves and head of the great parsley commonest 



