Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART If. THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. Amongst the most interesting features of the country are our forests. There is nothing that we come in contact with, which conveys to our minds such vivid impressions of the progression of England in power and population; which presents such startling contrasts between the present and the past. We look back into the England which an old forest brings to our mind, and see a country one wild expanse of woodlands, heaths, and mosses. Here and there a little simple town sending up Its fleecy smoke amongst the forest boughs. From age to age no tumult did arouse Its peaceful dwellers; there they lived and died, Passing a dreamy life, diversified By nought of novelty, save, now and then, A horn, resounding through the neighbouring glen, Woke them as from a trance, and led them out To catch a brief glimpse of the hunt's wild route; The music of the hounds; the tramp and rush Of steeds and men;?and then a sudden hush Left round the eager listeners;?the deep mood Of awful, dead, and twilight solitude, Fallen again upon that forest vast. 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, ...