194 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



are " poesy all ramm'd with life " shall grate the 

 nerves of the Hamlets of to-day ; who live too much 

 in the sun, whom man delights not, nor woman 

 neither! 



What a land to live in ! when its best landscape 

 painters men like Gainsborough or Constable 

 are so carried away by the influence of agriculture 

 upon landscape, so lost to the superiority of wild 

 solitude, that they will plainly tell you that they like 

 the fields the farmers work in, and the work they do 

 in them ; preferring Nature that was modified by 

 man, painting a well-cultivated country with villages 

 and mills and church-steeples seen over hedges and 

 between trees ! * 



What a land to live in ! when even Nature's wild 



children of field and forest hug their chains preserve 



their old ways and habits up to the very frontier-line 



of civilisation. For here is Jefferies (who ought to 



know) writing thus : " Modern progress, except where 



it has exterminated them, has scarcely touched the 



habits of bird or animal ; so almost up to the very 



houses of the metropolis the nightingale yearly returns 



to her old haunts. If we go a few hours' journey only, 



and then step just beyond the highway, where the 



steam ploughing-engine has left the mark of its wide 



wheels on the dust, and glance into the hedgerow, 



the copse, or stream, there are Nature's children as 



unrestrained in their wild, free life as they were in 



the veritable backwoods of primitive England." 



* See P. G. Hamerton's "Sylvan Year," p. 112. 



