12 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



trees may not die or grow sickly and unsightly, like 

 the rubbish of old furze. Still it is hard to make 

 blanks, letting in the wind, or the idle eye that steals 

 on the loved seclusion; the knife is reluctantly em- 

 ployed, and the axe is never laid to the root without 

 a sigh that shakes the leaves, and not till the for- 

 mality of a trial by jury has passed upon every tree 

 that is doomed to fall. Thinned, however, they are 

 as matter of necessity ; and then the important fact, 

 that trees, if they have room, will grow in breadth 

 as well as height, is happily discovered. Thus na- 

 ture does well for a season : not less abhorrent of a 

 vacuum than the planter, she fills, by lateral shoots, 

 every inch of space. But, by and by, there is a 

 deficiency for which nature, in such circumstances, 

 makes no provision ; as the trees rise in stature, the 

 under branches fall away, and leave only bare poles 

 in all the lower region, where shelter is chiefly wanted. 

 It is not supposed that the goodly evergreens 

 have been incautiously removed; but of these, no sort 

 presents any exception to this law of incipient and 

 progressive nakedness. The Scotch fir grows the 

 barest of all ; the spruce tribes do not long give shel- 

 ter, save where they are sheltered themselves ; and 

 the Weymouth, more delicate, thrives only in the 

 deep glen, or in the bosom of a large plantation. 

 An appeal to fact may be had in a matter so impor- 

 tant as to involve nearly all the merits of the strip ; 

 and nowhere will the reader find one of forty or sixty 

 feet in breadth, which has riot, at a certain age, all 

 the unseemliness ascribed, together with the vexing 

 appearance of a scheme that has miscarried. The 

 strip becomes an open shed, having some roof indeed, 



