All in a garden fair; the simple story of three boys ... - University Library

46
ALL I\ A GARDEN FAIR.
and his left liancl curled round his left ear, he
can easily make out what tlic bells say, and
urn again, and become Dick Whittington, and
sk Sir Charles the best way to become Lord
Mayor. Yet it is so far away that London fogs
fall never upon its pleasant gardens, and as for
that great canopy of i)erpetu'al smoke of which
we hear so much, there is not so much as the
fringe of it l)etween the children's eyes and the
blue of heaven.
It is so far from London, again, as to be
full of country delights, rural sounds and rural
sights. The rurality of the i)lace, to one fresh
from town, seems overdone, an affectation of
rurality, a pedantry and pretence, somewhat
over acted, of rusticity.
Thus, nowhere are the roads more liberally
edged with broad belts of grass, a^ if laud was
plentiful and chea]) ; nowhere will you lind
such broad, ugly, uncared-for ditches, with
])ollard wilhnvs and old oaks beside them,
blackberrv bushes and brambles scramblinjx
over them, and tall weeds, reeds, and stran^re