'EARTH '-STOPPING. 43 



countably-shaped rhomboids undreamt of in the 

 hardest book of Euclid, and then to go and dream 

 the realization of your symmetrical example-farm, the 

 wonder and delight of ardent agriculturists : but what 

 a change comes over the spirit of the dream, when 

 you mizzle out o' doors in the foggy November morn- 

 ing, and come to a dead stand-still at the tangled side 

 of a fence (Bless me ! why it looked nothing on paper I) 

 which has furnished the talk of many a Hunt-dinner 

 for some centuries past, for the splendid leaps and the 

 splendid ' purls/ it has given rise or given fall to. 

 Its height its enormous width its insurmountable 

 impracticable look altogether, require an eye quite 

 as steady and a heart quite as firm as the hunter's, 

 to take it. 



It seemed like sacrilege, indeed I felt self-con- 

 victed, at the first daring onslaught upon these giants 

 of the olden time. I was obliged to ' take a run at it ' 

 mentally, as it were, as many a man and horse had 

 before done bodily and in the flesh ; and stuff my ears 

 against the covered reproaches of the workmen. 



" Famous bank for rabbits, this here, sir ! I've 

 know'd twenty couple killed in a day out of it, in 

 my time, when Squire " 



" Ah ! well never mind " quoth I, sorely and 



