JLondon to Brighton. 115 



poverty of the soil, but chiefly because this road, in former 

 times, led to no main object; Brighton, till lately, having 

 been an insignificant village, without a port or harbour for 

 shipping. 



As one is always seeking something further than they have 

 already attained, the question occurs, whether English roads 

 would be improved by the adoption of the Continental avenues, 

 either of fruit or forest trees. In a general point of view, we 

 answer, without hesitation, they would not ; but we certainly 

 should desire to see fruit trees introduced more or less almost 

 everywhere ; not only in the hedges by the roadside, in mar- 

 gins of plantations, and in cottagers' gardens, but in the com- 

 mon field fences of the country. We would not introduce 

 them regularly, nor in such numbers as to injure the roads, 

 hedges, or crops, by their shade ; but here and there with dif- 

 ferent kinds of forest trees intervening ; and we would take 

 care to make choice of varieties which assume pyramidal 

 forms of growth, and whose fruits were small, and not liable 

 to be blown down by the wind. The cherry and the pear are 

 particularly eligible as hedge-row fruit trees, and would sup- 

 ply kirschwasser (Vol. IV. p. 179.), and perry; and entire 

 hedges might be made of many sorts of plums and apples, 

 for plum \)X2a\^^ {Encycof Agr.^ § 616.), cider, preserves, and 

 tarts. The common objection to planting fruit trees in hedges, 

 is that depredations would be made on them by the poor; 

 but it is to avoid such depredations on the fruit trees of the 

 rich, and to assist in humanising and rendering better and 

 happier the poor, that we are desirous of introducing fruit trees 

 everywhere. If the poor in Britain and Ireland were rendered 

 what the poor are in Wurtemberg and Baden, fruit trees here 

 would be as safe as they are there. If apples and pears were 

 as commonly grown as potatoes and turnips, depredations 

 would not be more frequently committed on the one kind of 

 crop than on the other. 



Besides beautifying the public roads by a sprinkling of fruit 

 trees here and there among other trees, we think something 

 might be made of the milestones, with a view to the same ob- 

 ject. In some places of Bavaria a semicircular area of turf, 15 or 

 or 20 ft. in diameter, is formed half round the milestone, open 

 to the road, and the curve bounded by a close row of trees. 

 Immediately within the row of trees is a bench of turf, as 

 a seat for pedestrian travellers ; and close behind the mile- 

 stone are three turf steps, of 3, 4, or 5 ft. high, for the purpose 

 of affording rest for persons carrying burdens on their backs 

 or heads. In various parts both of Germany and France, and 

 particularly in Wurtemberg and Alsace, stone benches are 



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