We see in the distance the stately castle of the feudal lord; we hear the bell of the convent from the neighbouring dale. There are solitary hamlets and scattered cottages, with mud walls and thatched roofs, peeping from the ocean of umbrageous tree-tops, and little patches of cultivation. Born thralls are tilling the lands of the thane, or watching his flocks and herds, to defend them from the wolves and bears; foresters are going their rounds beneath hoary oaks, on the watch for trespassers on venison and vert. We meet with the pilgrim with his scallop shell, and sandal shoon; we come suddenly on the solitude of the hermit, where some spring bubbles from the forest turf, or scatters its waters down the fern-hung rocks. Perhaps the noble and his train sweep past in pursuit of the stag or boar; perhaps the outlaw and his train in the same pursuit, and setting at defiance, amid vast woods and tracks familiar to himself, all the keen officers, and bloody statutes of forest law.

It is a pleasure but to hear,
The bridles ringing sharp and clear,

Amid the forest green;

To hear the rattle of the sheaves,

And coursers rustling in the leaves,

With many blasts between.

Stewart Rose's Red King.

Perhaps there is the sound of martial alarm-the clash of sudden onset in the forest glade. The dwellings of the vassals surrounding the lord's castle are in flames, fired by the band of some hostile noble. Such is the England into which an old forest carries our imagination;-partially peopled with feudal barons and unlettered serfs; without commerce abroad; without

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union within; brave, yet demi-savage; aspiring, but violent; pious, yet sanguinary in all its penal enactments. When we step out of memory and imagination into the cheerful daylight and conscious present, what an England now! All those forests, with three or four exceptions, are gone !-their names alone left in the land by the powerful impressions of time and cusOne wide expanse of cultivation;—the garden of the world;-swarming towns, splendid cities, busy and populous hamlets appearing everywhere, and fenced fields interscattered with patrician dwellings, not crowned with towers, lit by mere loop-holes, defended with bastioned gateways, portcullises, and drawbridges, and moats; but standing with open aspects of peaceful beauty, amid fair gardens and fair lawns, 'undefended by feudal ramparts, because a thousand times more strongly fortified by the security of enlightened laws. We see a swarming people, free, and full of knowledge, even to its hinds and mechanics, in possession of the highest arts of life; the hills and dales covered with their harvests and their cattle ;-the seas round the whole globe with their ships;—a people, at once the most powerful and the most civilized on the earth.

Those old feudal towers are, for the most part, crumbling into ruin, the wasting vestiges of a barbarous system, or embellished and adapted to the spirit of the present times. Those abbeys and convents, standing in similar ruins, or exhibiting still more marvellous change,-the altars pulled down, the chantries silenced, and the professors of a sacred celibacy driven out, and replaced by men of the world, with their wives and families;-no longer places of worship, but

places of domestic abode. Those two mighty powers, Feudalism and Popery-gone for ever!

Here is an astounding change. A stupendous march has been going on from that time to this; and one from which, is there a man, however much he may murmur at the present times, who would be willing to recede a single step? Would the noble be willing to give up the delights of London for a feudal castle surrounded by wild woods and wastes, a troop of rude retainers, and no resources but the year's round of hunting, or of party feuds-not of tongues in Westminster, but of swords and firebrands in the forests? Would he acquiesce in this, when the country can scarcely keep him a few months, though he can assemble round him kindred spirits, books, the elegancies and mind of social life, and the speediest news of the whole world? Would the country gentleman like to sink into a feudal retainer? The merchant follow his procession of pack-horses through narrow roads, and in high peril of bandits? The farmer drop down into the born thrall? The parish priest convert his pleasant parsonage and family into the solitary bachelorship of popery? Would the man most pressed by the cares and heart-griping necessities of this populous and struggling time, be willing to accept the quiet simplicity of those days, with their monotonous solitude, ignorance, servitude, and perpetual danger of arbitrary infliction of death or mutilation?

And yet, in what colours of the rose do our imaginations clothe these times? The repose, the simplicity, the picturesque solitude, come before us with a peculiar feeling of delight. And so, no doubt, there was a wild charm about them. The old minstrels

delighted to sing about them, and they did it with a feeling of nature. The green shaws, the merry green woods, especially when "the leaves were lark and long" in summer; when

The wood-wele sang and would not cease,

Sitting upon the spray;

We

the exploits of the outlaw; the hymn of the lonely anchorite; the vesper-bell of the convent; and the chivalrous adventures of knights and dames in forests and hoary holts, fired them with a genuine enthusiasm, and communicate their warmth to us. No doubt too, that baron and esquire, forester and lawless pursuers of the deer, had all a wild delight in their life; and instinctively closing the eyes of our mind upon what was dark and unpalatable in their practice, we open them to all that was free, peaceful, and in contrast with our own situation and mode of existence. rush from cities and social anxieties into the free world of woods and wildernesses, with hearts that feel the cool refreshments of nature. To us it is a novelty, with all its piquancy about it; and we cannot bide long enough to wear off the charm. We come too, with the high poetry of a thousand intellectual associations to take possession of woodland freedom. We have all the power of Milton, Shakspeare, Spenser, and Ariosto upon us; and how delicious seems the picturesque England of the feudal ages! We have, indeed, now too little of what they had too much. They, like the modern Americans, would gladly have exchanged some of their trees for cultivated lands; they had too much of a good thing; in popular phraseology, they could not see the wood for trees: but oh! how delightful are those tree-lands to us,

prisoners of civilization, and walkers amongst brickwalls.

Let us wander awhile now amongst those fresh woodlands. Our old chroniclers tell us, that this kingdom was once nearly overspread with forests; that they existed from time immemorial; that is, long before the Norman dynasty commenced, by which they were more perfectly defined, carefully fenced, and protected with sanguinary laws. part of the country, and indeed, which retained its original state.

They were that the greater part, That which re

mained uninclosed, and therefore called forest, or foresta, quasi ferarum statio, because there naturally retired and made their abode the wild creatures, fera naturæ. All this was held to belong to the king; and when the Conqueror began to reign, who had occasion to give away and divide large tracts amongst his military followers, he began to exercise more strictly his prerogative over the remainder. Not satisfied with sixty-nine forests, lying in almost every part of the kingdom, such, and so many, as Evelyn says, as no other realm of Europe had, he laid waste a vast tract of country in Hampshire, and created another, thence called the New Forest, because it was the last added to the ancient ones, except that of Hampton Court, the work of Henry VIII.

Various opinions respecting the origin of this New Forest have occupied the attention, and divided the opinions of antiquarians and historians. Polydore Virgil asserted that the Conqueror's motive for afforesting so large a tract of country here, was because it enabled him to maintain it, secure from the intrusion of all but his own creatures, and thereby always to have