over the open expanses of the earth, lives
there alone, ready to send its bracing spirit
through the blood of the jaded visitant, and
to peal its sublime organ tune from the tops
of the hoary woods in the ears of the pale
poets of the thousand workshops of the
vast city, and tell them that there is still
a God and a Nature beyond their gigantic
haunt of trade, of hurry, and of noise. We
may create commerce, stretch an iron road
from sea to sea, tunnel mountains, and carry
bridges over the straits of the roaring ocean;
but the more we do this, and thus redouble
at the centre of all this life and power
the struggle and the stir of a vehement
and wondrous existence, the more we have
need to guard the few remaining avenues
to health and quiet. We must, therefore,
jealously maintain these avenues and escapes
to the needful relaxation of the strained
physical system, and sweet tone of the over-
excited mind. And, we repeat it, that while
we can create ships and colonies, railways and
mercantile traffic, to an amazing and
magnificent extent, we cannot create at all the
very means which are necessary to give the
requisite counterpoise to all this development
of moil and toil. Where there is
augmented art, there must be equally available
nature. The more we extend our wildernesses
of brick and mortar, of gas-lights and stone
pavements, the more must we take care that
there is another kind of wilderness beyond,
which is accessible. There must be left traces,
and goodly traces too, liberal and sufficing
slices of the unappropriated earth, where the
sun shines through a blue sky, and upon
noble woods and dewy heaths,—- where there
is quiet, and a soothing repose, and a
breeze blowing on the uncovered brow, guiltless
of smoke from millions of chimnies, and
exhausted air from millions of lungs. We
must have this, if we do not mean, with all
our straining at the powers of life, and all our
piling up of ever-new loads of labour and
excitement on the brains and sinews of the city
population, to have a proportionate revelation
of disease, demoralisation, insanity, and
death.

The Board of Health should look to this.
Its Commissioners know, and the medical
profession knows, that already there are
diseases of a singular and subtle kind—- and
some of them especially attacking the female
portion of the metropolitan population—-
which were totally unknown to our ancestors,
and for which no cause can be assigned,
except our more sedentary and restricted
habits, originating in the decreased facilities
for natural exercise.

Now, if there be one tract of open country
more requisite than another for a counterpoise
to the monstrous growth of London
baked clay—- to the ever-extending brick cells
of the human insect—- to the daily augmenting
amount of labour and bustle within the
metropolis—- it is just this Forest of Waltham,
more commonly known by the names of
Epping and Hainault Forests.

It is strange that a small encroachment
upon Kensington Gardens seems to have
diverted public attention from the impending
fate of the Essex Forest. How is this?
Have we all such a westward tendency that
we are totally ignorant of the immense
importance of these forests to London? With
all our sanitary philosophy, can it be possible
that it can have escaped us, that while the
Government have been spending upwards of
fifty thousand pounds for the creation of
Victoria Park, for the resort of the swarming
population of Whitechapel, Spitalfields, and
Bethnal Green, London has already stretched
out its giant arms, its ever-lengthening and
forward-feeling polypus tubes, to the very
edge of these very forests? From the park
of Victoria itself—- deemed so necessary to this
side of London as to have to be bought and
created—- you have only to look across the
valley of the Lea, and there stands the wooded
margin of Hainault Forest, saying as impressively
as "the still, small," but yet
omnipotent " voice " of nature can, that London,
with all its means of life, and all its mighty
need, will soon fling its arms around it.

We are convinced that whatever may be
the knowledge of a considerable portion of our
plodding population, of the real importance of
this forest to the London health and recreation,
the Ministers themselves cannot be
aware of it. We cannot, and will not, believe
that a sanitary Government—- a Government
which has done so much, and is contemplating
so much more to improve the condition of the
capital, and to confer on it all possible means
of health and enjoyment—- can be aware of the
real state of this question. They cannot be
aware of the immense extent to which the
resort to these forests is enjoyed. Hyde Park
and Kensington Gardens are, as we have said,
of vast advantage to their side of London; but
we cannot forget that were they actually
destroyed, the greater portion of those who
daily enjoy them, would, for more than half
the year, have all the world beside at their
command. Parliament over, the gay season
closed, away they can speed by railroad, yacht,
and steamer, to the Alps or Apennines; to the
shores of the Mediterranean, or the mountains
and forests of Scandinavia; to the beautiful
hills, and halls, and moorland streams, of our
own country. But to the bulk of the population
of London, and especially of the city,
which most needs it, there is no single thing
like a forest, which they reach at little time
and expense, except those of Epping and
Hainault. Greenwich and Richmond are well
enough, and the people show, by their
constant outpourings thither, that they know
and feel it well enough, and, indeed, delightful
for a direct step out of the brick-dust world
into the green. But if the great mass of
the working people want to see something
like a real forest-tract, where is there such