WAY-SIDE HINTS. 155 



every intelligent traveller, or impress upon him such 

 rural lessons as every adjoining proprietor should 

 make it a virtue to teach. 



When a farm or country-seat is traversed by a 

 deep cutting for the railway bed so deep as to for- 

 bid any extended side views a tasteful proprietor 

 may still mark his lands noticeably, and well, by 

 arranging in concert with the railway officials an 

 easily graded slope upon either side of the cutting, 

 which, by a few simple dressings, shall be brought 

 into a grassy surface telling a good story for the 

 flats above, and showing upon their extreme height a 

 skirting hedge-row or coppice, or possibly the trellis 

 of some rustic paling, blooming with flowers, and (it" 

 convenience of pathway require it) stretching upon 

 either side of a bridgelet, across the chasm of the 

 road. Even where such cutting is through cliff, noth- 

 ing is to forbid the dressing of the higher ledges with 

 a few crimson bunches of columbines, to nod their 

 heads between the eye of the traveller and the sky, 

 and make good report, from their little corners, of the 

 people whose every-day walk skirts the cliffs. If a 

 gradual slope, or terraces, are admissible by the 

 nature of the cutting, it is a question if these may not 

 be made to carry their parterres of flowers, or of 

 blooming shrubs, to give charm to the borders of an 

 estate. I have somewhere seen such slope, whereon 



