' EARTH '-STOPPING. 4 7 



Christmas; but is it not rather dearly retained, 

 when land is being cut up for Railroads all round 

 us, at two 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 best 

 upon 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 husbandman 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 

 beauty to the net-work of intersecting barriers that 

 arrest at once the plough and the prospect, and carry 



