Being thus provided with all things necessary for comfort, we rattled
merrily away, and I, remembering that I was in England, kept my eyes
wide open to see what I could see. The hedges of the fields were just
budding, and the green showed itself on them, like a thin gauze veil.
These hedges are not all so well kept and trimmed as I expected to find
them. Some, it is true, are cut very carefully; these are generally
hedges to ornamental grounds; but many of those which separate the
fields straggle and sprawl, and have some high bushes and some low ones,
and, in short, are no more like a hedge than many rows of bushes that we
have at home. But such as they are, they are the only dividing lines of
the fields, and it is certainly a more picturesque mode of division than
our stone or worm fences. Outside of every hedge, towards the street,
there is generally a ditch, and at the bottom of the hedge is the
favorite nestling-place for all sorts of wild flowers. I remember
reading in stories about children trying to crawl through a gap in the
hedge to get at flowers, and tumbling into a ditch on the other side,
and I now saw exactly how they could do it.

As we drive we pass by many beautiful establishments, about of the
quality of our handsomest country houses, but whose grounds are kept
with a precision and exactness rarely to be seen among us. We cannot get
the gardeners who are qualified to do it; and if we could, the
painstaking, slow way of proceeding, and the habit of creeping
thoroughness, which are necessary to accomplish such results, die out in
America. Nevertheless, such grounds are exceedingly beautiful to look
upon, and I was much obliged to the owners of these places for keeping
their gates hospitably open, as seems to be the custom here.

After a drive of seven or eight miles, we alighted in front of Speke
Hall. This house is a specimen of the old fortified houses of England,