XII. 



A CHAPTER ON HEDGES. 



Febi-viaiy, 1847. 

 " rr'^HERE was a certain houseHolder which planted a vineyard, 

 ■i- and hedffed-it round about." What better proof can we give, 

 than this sacred' and famihar passage, of the antiquity, as well as 

 the wisdom, of making hedges. But indeed the custom is older 

 than the Christian era. Homer tells us that when Ulysses, after his 

 great deeiis, returned to^ seek his father Laertes, he found the old 

 king in his garden, preparing the ground for a hedge, while his ser- 

 vants were absent, 



" To search the woods for sets of flowery thorn, 

 Their orchard bounds to strengthen and adorn." 



Pope's Odyssey. 



The lapse of 3000 years has not taught the husbandman or the 

 owners of orchards and gardens, in modern times, any fairer or bet- 

 ter mode of enclosing their lands, than this most natural and simple 

 one of hedging it round about. Fences of iron or wood, carefully 

 fashioned by art, are fitting and appropriate in their proper places 



that is, in the midst of houses and great cities— but in the open, 



free expanse of country landscape, the most costly artificial barrier 

 looks hard and incongruous beside the pleasant verdure of a live 

 hedge. 



Necessity, it is often said, knows no law, and the emi^ant set> 

 tier on new lands, where stone and timber are so abundant as to be 



