"Friars and many other masters, That to lewed[30] men preachen, Ye moven matters unmeasurable To tellen of the Trinity, That oft times the lewed people Of their belief doubt. Better it were to many doctors To leave such teaching, And tell men of the ten commandments, And touching the seven sins, And of the branches that bourgeoneth of them, And bringeth men to hell, And how that folk in follies Misspenden their five wits, As well friars as other folks, Foolishly spending, In housing, in hatering,[31] And in to high clergy showing More for pomp than for pure charity. The people wot the sooth That I lie not, lo! For lords ye pleasen, And reverence the rich The rather for their silver." It would be hardly proper to leave this portion of the subject without alluding to the remarkable passage which has been held by many as a prophecy of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., nearly two centuries later. After denouncing the corruptions of the clergy, he says:-- "But there shall come a king And confess you religiouses, And beat you as the Bible telleth For breaking of your rule; And amend monials, Monks and canons, And put them to their penance. * * * * * And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon, And all his issue forever, Have a knock of a king, And incurable the wound." A distinctive and charming feature of the English landscape is the hedgerow that divides the fields and marks the course of the roadways. Nowhere but in England does the landscape present such a charming picture of "meadows trim with daisies pied," "russet lawns and fallows gray," spread out like a map, divided with irregular lines of green. Nowhere else is the traveller's path guarded on either hand with a rampart of delicate primroses, sweet-breathed violets, golden buttercups fit for fairy revels, honeysuckles in whose bells the bee rings a delighted peal, and luscious-fruited blackberry-bushes. Nowhere else is such a rampart crowned with the sweet-scented hawthorn, robed in snowy blossoms, or beaded over with scarlet berries, and with the hazel, with its gracefully pendent catkins, or nuts dear to the school-boy. It scarcely seems possible to imagine an English landscape without its flower-scented hedge-rows, and yet, when the armed knights of Edward the Third's reign rode abroad from their castles, few lofty hedges barred their progress across the country; no hazel-crowned rampart stopped the way of the Malvern monk as he took his way to the "bourne's side"; and when the ploughman "whistled o'er the furrowed land," the line of division at which he turned his back on his neighbor's acres was generally but a narrow trench instead of a ditch and hedge. Thus the covetous man confesses,