“I am delighted to hear the plantings get on so well. The weather here has been cruelly changeable—fresh one day—frost the next—snow the third. This morning the snow lay three inches thick, and before noon it was gone, and blowing a tempest. Many of the better ranks are ill of the typhus fever, and some deaths. How do your poor folks come on? Let Tom advance you money when it is wanted. I do not propose, like the heroine of a novel, to convert the hovels of want into the abodes of elegant plenty, but we have enough to spare to relieve actual distress, and do not wish to economize where we can find out (which is difficult) where the assistance is instantly useful.
“Don’t let Tom forget hedgerow trees, which he is very unwilling to
remember; and also to plant birches, oaks, elms, and suchlike round-headed
trees along the verges of the Kaeside plantations; they make a beautiful
outline, and also a sort of fence, and were not planted last year because the
earth at the sunk fences was too newly travelled. This should be mixed with
various bushes, as hollies, thorns, so as to make a wild hedge, or thickety
obstruction to the inroads of cattle. A few sweetbriers, alders, honeysuckles,
laburnums, &c., should be thrown in. A verdant screen may be made in this
way of the wildest and most beautiful description, which should never be dipt,
only pruned, allowing the loose branches to drop over those that are taken
away. Tom is very costive about trees, and talks only of
300 poplars. I shall send at least double that number; also some hag-berries,
&c. He thinks he is saving me money, when he is starving my projects; but
he is a pearl of honesty and good intention, and I like him the
| 136 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
