over, I have taken such firm and tenacious hold of my new soil, that
I would not for the world be pulled up again, even to be restored to
the old beloved ground;--not even if its beauty were undiminished,
which is by no means the case; for in those three years it has
thrice changed masters, and every successive possessor has brought
the curse of improvement upon the place; so that between filling up
the water to cure dampness, cutting down trees to let in prospects,
planting to keep them out, shutting up windows to darken the inside
of the house (by which means one end looks precisely as an eight of
spades would do that should have the misfortune to lose one of his
corner pips), and building colonnades to lighten the out, added to a
general clearance of pollards, and brambles, and ivy, and
honeysuckles, and park palings, and irregular shrubs, the poor place
is so transmogrified, that if it had its old looking-glass, the
water, back again, it would not know its own face. And yet I love
to haunt round about it: so does May. Her particular attraction is
a certain broken bank full of rabbit burrows, into which she
insinuates her long pliant head and neck, and tears her pretty feet
by vain scratchings: mine is a warm sunny hedgerow, in the same
remote field, famous for early flowers. Never was a spot more
variously flowery: primroses yellow, lilac white, violets of either
hue, cowslips, oxslips, arums, orchises, wild hyacinths, ground ivy,
pansies, strawberries, heart's-ease, formed a small part of the
Flora of that wild hedgerow. How profusely they covered the sunny
open slope under the weeping birch, 'the lady of the woods'--and how
often have I started to see the early innocent brown snake, who
loved the spot as well as I did, winding along the young blossoms,
or rustling amongst the fallen leaves! There are primrose leaves
already, and short green buds, but no flowers; not even in that
furze cradle so full of roots, where they used to blow as in a