46 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



they contain is very rarely so they are equally an 

 obstruction to the plough that toils for bread, and the 

 eye that wanders for beauty. Far be it from the old 

 Chronicler to depreciate the " tangled copse " or the 

 " boundless contiguity of shade " that gilds the early 

 remembrance of some, and the imagination of all; 

 that lives in the tasteful pages of Evelyn and Price, 

 or in the 'charming bits' of Wilson or Nasmyth : but 

 where can be the pictorial or moral beauty of a great 

 crooked artificial mound surmounted by a dead fence 

 serrated into gaps and 'raspers/ or at the best, hogged 

 into dreary uniformity that cuts the blessed landscape 

 from the eye, by a man-made barrier of stakes and 

 ' witherings/ " Take away the curtain that I may see 

 the picture " might any mortal say, who from his first 

 lesson in Geography had learnt that a man six feet 

 high has a sort of physical right to a panoramic hori- 

 zon of three miles on this round globe of ours, even 

 in a district like mine where not a hill was to be 

 viewed. 



To be sure there is one rather formidable consi- 

 deration the hedge-pheasant-shooting ' beating the 

 outsides ' that pleasant October skirmishing that pre- 

 cedes the coming up of the heavy artillery at Christ- 

 mas ; but is it not rather dearly retained, when land is 



