THE HOLLY. 



61 



covered with snow, it is a brilliant object, and is 

 made all the more interesting by the multitudes of 

 birds which flock to it for the sake of its berries. 

 Evelyn is lavish in his praises of the Holly, though 

 his eulogium is strongly tinctured with the taste 

 of the age in which he wrote : — Is there under 

 heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of 

 the kind, than an impregnable hedge of about four 

 hundred feet in length, nine feet high, and five 

 feet in diameter, which I can shew in my now 

 ruined gardens at Say's Court (thanks to the 

 Czar of Muscovy,*) at any time of the year, 

 glittering with its armed and varnished leaves ? 

 The taller standards at orderly distances, blushing 

 with their natural coral, it mocks the rudest 

 assaults of the weather, beasts, or hedgebreakers." 

 This description will perhaps be deemed over- 

 coloured ; nevertheless, the Holly is far superior 

 to any other tree we possess for the formation of 

 living hedges. It is very durable, patient of any 

 amount of clipping, liable to no blight, and 

 equally impenetrable at all seasons of the year. 

 It is, besides, proof against the most inclement 

 weather, and may be trained to a greater height 

 than any other hedge-tree. At Tyningham, the 

 seat of the Earl of Haddington, there are 2952 

 yards of Holly-hedge, chiefly planted in 1712. 

 In height they vary from ten to twenty-five feet, 

 and are from nine to thirteen feet wide at the 

 base. They are regularly clipped every April, 



* The Czar, Peter the Great, resided at Mr. Evelyn's house 

 during his stay in England, in order to be near the Dockyard at 

 Deptford. The Emperor, it is said, took very great delight in the 

 amusement of being wheeled in a barrow through the thick Holly- 

 hedges, which were the pride of the garden. 



