The
porch of this farmhouse is covered by a rose-tree; and the little
garden surrounding it is crowded with a medley of old-fashioned
herbs and flowers, planted long ago, when the garden was the only
druggist's shop within reach, and allowed to grow in scrambling and
wild luxuriance--roses, lavender, sage, balm (for tea), rosemary,
pinks and wallflowers, onions and jessamine, in most republican and
indiscriminate order. This farmhouse and garden are within a
hundred yards of the stile of which I spoke, leading from the large
pasture field into a smaller one, divided by a hedge of hawthorn and
blackthorn; and near this stile, on the further side, there runs a
tale that primroses may often be found, and occasionally the blue
sweet violet on the grassy hedge bank.
I do not know whether it was on a holiday granted by the masters, or
a holiday seized in right of Nature and her beautiful spring time by
the workmen, but one afternoon (now ten or a dozen years ago) these
fields were much thronged. It was an early May evening--the April
of the poets; for heavy showers had fallen all the morning, and the
round, soft, white clouds which were blown by a west wind over the
dark blue sky, were sometimes varied by one blacker and more
threatening.
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