io6 The Delights of Hedgerows. 



his craft, and that only strong muscle and thews and 

 sinews are needed, I would recommend you, the next 

 time you go to the country, to have a try at it and see 

 how you succeed. In hedging, the trained accuracy of 

 eye, which is noticed in the rustic, is especially seen. 

 However careful you might be, you would find that 

 you would leave the hedge in such breaks and notches 

 as would surprise you, and probably make you feel 

 ashamed of your conceit. But the hedger, without any 

 doubt or hesitation, stroke by stroke and without cessa- 

 tion, shaves off as many feet as leaves an exact line 

 along a whole length of field as level as a wall, and 

 without knobs or notches anywhere. If there are a 

 few fancy trees or elevations in the hedge he will, if 

 you give him due encouragement, cut them into the 

 oddest and most outre shapes. 



Hedges cannot really be thought of without ditches ; 

 just as light is invariably accompanied by shadow, so 

 the ditch may be called the shadow of the hedge. In 

 old days, before scientific drainage of land was carried 

 to such an extent as now, naturally more importance 

 was attached to the keeping of them ; and so well were 

 they in many cases kept that large reaches were, save in 

 exceptional circumstances, dry; and these dry ditches 

 were very much favoured by tramps and paupers as 

 places of repose before the passing of that most philan- 

 thropic, if somewhat repressive, measure (over which 

 the inoffensive Thomas de Quincey mourned), making 

 it an offence to sleep in the open air. "To die in a 

 ditch " may not therefore quite carry all the degrading 

 associations apt to be conjured up by the phrase, 

 however much it may indicate that the person was 

 unfortunate, and fell from the high estate of the respect- 

 able citizen and taxpaying householder. In favourable 



