

II. ENCLOSING, LAYING OUT. 



feet wide had been made on the side of the hill, and, at 

 the back of this flat, the wall was erected. After the 

 flat, towards the south, began the slope; at the end of the 

 slope began the level ground, which grew more and more 

 moist as it approached the river. At the foot of the 

 garden, there ran a rivulet, coming from a fish-pond, and 

 at a little distance from that, emptying itself into the 

 river. The hill itself was a bed of sand 5 therefore, the 

 flat, at the back of which the north wall stood j that is 

 to say, the wall on the north side of the garden ; this 

 flat must have been made ground. The slope must buve 

 been partly made, otherwise it would have been too 

 sandy. 



14. This was the finest situation for a kitchen-garden 

 that I ever saw. It was wholly torn to pieces about fifty 

 years ago ; the wall pulled down j the garden made into 

 a sort of lawn, and the lower part of it, when 1 saw the 

 spot about three years ago, a coarse, rushey meadow, all 

 the drains which formerly took away the oozings from 

 the hill, having been choaked up or broken up ; and that 

 spot, where the earliest birds used to sing, and where 

 prodigious quantities of the finest fruits used to be 

 borne, was become just as sterile, and as ill-looking a 

 piece of ground, short of a mere common or neglected 

 field, as I ever set my eyes on. That very spot where I had 

 seen bushels of haut-boy strawberries, such as I have 

 never seen from that day to this ; that very spot, the 

 precise locality of which, it took me (so disfigured was 

 the place !) the better part of an hour to ascertain, was 

 actually part of a sort of swampy meadow, producing 

 sedgy grass and rushes. ThiS most secluded and beau- 



