35 



pales at the toot of the bank on each side, 

 and on that next his house he raised a peat 

 wall as upright as it could well stand, by 

 way of a facing to the old bank, and in 

 the middle of this peat wall, planted a row 

 of laurels: this row the gardener used to 

 cut quite flat at top, and the cattle reach- 

 ing over the pales, and browsing the lower 

 shoots within their bite, kept it as even at 

 bottom; so that it formed one projecting 

 lump in the middle, and had just as pic- 

 turesque an appearance as a bushy wig- 

 squeezed between the hat and the cape. 

 I should add, that these two specimens 

 of dressed lanes are not in a distant 

 county, but within thirty miles of London, 

 and in a district full of expensive embel- 

 lishments. 



I am afraid many of my readers will 

 think that I have been a long while getting 

 through these lanes ; but in them, in old 

 quarries, and long neglected chalk and 

 gravel pits, a great deal of what constitutes, 

 and what destroys picturesque beauty, is 



p 2 



