252 OUR WOODLAND TREES. 
hence it was that houses were built in the secluded 
hollows of hill-troughs, embowered amidst the 
towering banks of green lanes, or placed under 
the darker shadows of clustering Trees. There 
was a delightful commingling of town and country 
—the town struggling for pre-eminence, but the 
country always having it. 
In most towns the line of demarcation is sternly 
drawn by bricks and mortar. It is man’s fault 
that it is so; but the fact is as we state it. In the 
Author’s birthplace there was sweet communica- 
tion from paved roads to green lanes. At half-a- 
dozen points in the High Street you might turn 
either to the right or to the left, and find yourself 
in the winding maze of a country lane, and forget 
in the instant presence of ferny tufts and moss- 
covered stones that you had just passed from the 
harsher aspect of busy streets. To get to the 
‘top of the town’ you had, in very truth, to 
climb the steep side of a hill. But when you had 
reached a point on a level with the highest house- 
top, the hill still soared steeply upwards. Fol- 
lowing the path through a green and winding lane 
for a full mile further, you reached a height from 
