NATUEE IN ENGLAND 19 



pounded stone at regular distances, every fragment 

 of which will go through a two-inch ring. The 

 roads are mended only in winter, and are kept as 

 smooth and hard as a rock. No swells or ' thank- 

 y'-ma'ams ' in them to turn the water; they shed 

 the water like- a rounded pavement. On the hill, 

 three miles from Stratford, where a finger-post points 

 you to Hampton Lucy, I turn and see the spire of 

 Shakespeare's church between the trees. It lies in 

 a broad, gentle valley, and rises above much foliage. 

 ' I hope and praise God it will keep f oine, ' said the 

 old woman at whose little cottage I stopped for 

 ginger-beer, attracted by a sign in the window. 

 ' One penny, sir, if you please. I made it myself, 

 sir. I do not leave the front door unfastened ' 

 (undoing it to let me out) ' when I am down in the 

 garden. ' A weasel runs across the road in front of 

 me, and is scolded by a little bird. The body of 

 a dead hedgehog festering beside the hedge. A 

 species of St. John's-wort in bloom, teasels, and a 

 small convolvulus. Also a species of plantain with 

 a head large as my finger, purple tinged with white. 

 Eoad margins wide, grassy, and fragrant with 

 clover. Privet in bloom in the hedges, panicles of 

 small white flowers faintly sweet-scented. ' As 

 clean and white as privet when it flowers,' says 

 Tennyson in 'Walking to the Mail.' The road 

 and avenue between noble trees, beech, ash, elm, 

 and oak. All the fields are bounded by lines of 

 stately trees; the distance is black with them. A 

 large thistle by the roadside, with homeless bumble- 



