WAY-SIDE HINTS. 147 



reputation of a town for order, for neatness, for liber- 

 ality, or taste, is even now worth something, and it 

 is coming to be worth more, year by year. 



Railway Gardening. 



I HAVE alluded to the railway station and its 

 surroundings, because it seems to me that in 

 the lessons of public taste which are being read from 

 time to time by those competent to teach on such 

 topics this new junction of the world with country 

 localities is being sadly overlooked. Where indeed 

 can there be a hopeful opening for any aesthetic teach- 

 ing, if this inoculation and grafting-point of the busi- 

 ness world with the world ruminant and rural, is al- 

 lowed to fix, with all its ugly swell of swathing band- 

 ages and pitch and mud, un cared for ? 



The question of proprietorship might give some 

 difficulty, but it is one whose difficulties would vanish, 

 if only the corporate authorities of town and road 

 could be brought to act in harmony. Nor is there 

 any reason in the economies of the matter why they 

 should not. The road secures a limited area for the 

 establishment of its station, and some outlying 

 grounds, in most cases, to guard against future con- 

 tingencies which grounds usually rest in a most 



