But here, no sooner is a stone fence built, than Nature sets to work to
make it a part of herself. She adopts it and adorns it, as if it were
her own child. A little sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the side,
and clinging fast with its many feet; a tuft of grass roots itself
between two of the stones, where a little dust from the road has been
moistened into soil for it: a small bunch of fern grows in another such
crevice; a deep, soft, green moss spreads itself over the top and all
along the sides of the fence; and wherever nothing else will grow,
lichens adhere to the stones and variegate their lines. Finally, a great
deal of shrubbery is sure to cluster along its extent, and take away all
hardness from the outline; and so the whole stone fence looks as if God
had had at least as much to do with it as man. The trunks of the trees,
too, exhibit a similar parasitical vegetation. Parasitical is an unkind
phrase to bestow on this beautiful love and kindness which seems to exist
here between one plant and another; the strong thing--being always ready
to give support and sustenance, and the weak thing to repay with beauty,
so that both are the richer,--as in the case of ivy and woodbine,
clustering up the trunk of a tall tree, and adding Corinthian grace to
its lofty beauty.
Mr. W------, our landlord, has lent us a splendid work with engravings,
illustrating the antiquities of Furness Abbey.
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