An Ancient Garden. 85 
Tall yew hedges, reaching high overhead, thick 
and impervious, such as could only be produced in a 
hundred years of growth and countless clippings, 
enclosing a green pleasaunce, the grass uncut for 
many a year, weeds overrunning the smooth surface 
on which the bowls once rolled true to their bias. In 
the shelter of these hedges, upon the sunny side, you 
might walk in early spring when the east wind is 
harshest, without a breath penetrating to chill the 
blood, warm as within a cloak of sables, enjoying that 
peculiar genial feeling which is induced by sunshine 
at that period only, and which is somewhat akin to 
the sense of convalescence after a weary illness. 
Thus, sauntering to and fro, your footstep, returning 
on itself, passed the thrush sitting on her nest calm 
and confident. 
No modern exotic evergreens ever attract our 
English birds like the true old English trees and 
shrubs. In the box and yew they love to build; 
spindly laurels and rhododendrons, with vacant 
draughty spaces underneath, they detest, avoiding 
them as much as possible. The common hawthorn 
hedge round a country garden shall contain three 
times as many nests, and be visited by five times as 
many birds, as the foreign evergreens, so costly to rear 
and so sure to be killed by the first old-fashioned 
frost. 
The thrushes are singularly fond of the yew berry ; 
it is of a sticky substance, sweet and not unpleasant. 
