'EARTH '-STOPPING. 47 



being cut up for Railroads all round us, at tM'o or 

 three hundred pounds the acre, and scarcely a vestige 

 or margin left to inclose for the "more more" cry of 

 an increasing population? 



It is at the least, a consolation to think that these 

 huge banks have no prescriptive right : that when 

 Cowper told us " God made the Country " he did not 

 mean to deny that man made the hedgerows, or the 

 conclusion that what he had raised up, he might pull 

 down ; especially when it is discovered, as each may 

 prove for himself, that the Thorn grows much better 

 on the level. 



No ! let the Park and the Pleasaunce have their 

 varied and picturesque alternation of bush and tree 

 and green-sward, of broken masses winding glades 

 and labyrinthine glens; and let the Forest have 

 its leafy screen, its deep and devious mysteries of 

 light and shade; but let the field of the husband- 

 man have that beauty of its own the charm that 

 Nature delights to throw over everything in proper 

 turn and place. The waving and extensive Corn-field, 

 the deep rich winter-verdure of the turnip-crop, the 

 dark and mellow surface of the fallow, owe little of 

 l>eauty to the net-work of intersecting barriers that 

 arrest at once the plough and the prospect, and carry 



