The exulting Irishman ran and picked it up in triumph, and held it out at arm's length by one of its hind legs, exclaiming, "And how it alters a bird to shoot its feathers off, to be sure!" It would alter England nearly as much in aspect, if the unsparing despotism of pounds s.

d.
should root out the hedge-row trees, and substitute invisible lines of wire for the flowering hawthorn as a fencing for those fields which now look so much like framed portraits of Nature's best painting.
The tendency of these utilitarian times may well occasion an unpleasant concern in the lovers of English rural scenery.

What changes may come in the wake of the farmer's steam-engine, steam- plough, or under the smoke-shadows from his factory-like chimney, these recent "improvements" may suggest and induce.

One can see in any direction he may travel these changes going on silently.

Those little, unique fields, defined by lines and shapes unknown to geometry, are going out of the rural landscape.