a thing within their reach but this one
solitary forest of Waltham, which is menaced
by the axe and the spade by our own
SANITARY GOVERNMENT? When the souls
of thousands and tens of thousands whom
we are building improved houses for, and
creating parks for, and establishing ragged
schools for, and others whom we are educating
in mechanics' libraries, people's libraries,
Whittington clubs, and by lectures and
popular journals, to a higher and purer taste,
to a feeling for art, and an appreciation of our
great poets and historians,—- when the many
souls of these long for sight of free nature
and a breathing of her free wind, where are
they to find them except in these forests?

But do the people really estimate the privileges
of visiting these forest regions? Do
they frequent them in any numbers? Do
they enjoy them in any extraordinary degree?
Let us take the evidence of an eye-witness.
Mr. Howitt, who has lived for years on that
side of London, in his "Year-book of the
Country," gives many statements of the avidity
with which all classes stream into these
forests all summer long. He describes happy
families driving children in their handsome
carriages, till the whole Lea-Bridge road is
alive with them. Speaking in the name of
the large and wealthy middle class, the trading
class of the city, he says:—-

"The bells burst forth with a joyous peal,
and remind us that it is Whitsuntide—-
Whitsuntide in London! At once a world of glad
and beautiful things rushes over our hearts
and our memories. * * * With the pealing
bells we break the spell of town dreariness,
and are once more in the midst of the
woods. We take our first flight into the near
Forest of Epping; we walk for miles in green
glades, and beneath the close covert of the
green boughs of the hornbeam trees; we pass
on, and wonder where are the people who in
caravans have gaily driven from town to enjoy
the forest freshness.

"Once more we are seated in a pleasant
opening of the forest, at our pastoral dinner.
Our friend, Henry C. Wright, sits, as he sate
twelve months ago, amongst a group of
children opposite us, and tells them of the
different scenery and creatures of the vast
forests of America. After an hour spent
more delightfully than in any city, or in any
king's palace, we arise and stroll into the
brown solitude of High-Beech. There, bare
ground, the scattered leaves of the last year, the
old and noble beeches, carry us away to many
a forest scene in the old and beloved Germany.
We walk and dream—- and miles of
profoundly solitary woods, and old solitary Jäger-
houses, and primitive villages in deep, remote
glens, and antiquated inns in rarely visited
regions, rise before us as we go. But the
gipsy, who would fain tell you your fortune,
though you know too much of it already, and
the laughter of parties of young people pic-nicing
here and there, with lots of baskets,
and some fiddles, and heaps of cloaks, and
horses still harnessed to gigs and chaises,
hanging their heads in sleepy posture near,
awake us from our pleasant reveries, and we
take one long view from a hill-top of the far-
spread country, and mount our own vehicles,
and away. Away! but whither? To the
Old Lodge of Queen Bess!

"Old Lodge! the hand of the past is
impressed upon thee, and has given thee a
character. It has invested thee with the
poetry of nature. Storms roaring through
the huge elms that stand near—- old
companions; fierce winters beating on thy steep,
gabled roof, and tinting thy framed walls;
autumns and springs, and hot-baking summers
—- a long series—- come across the imagination,
as we think of thee. The broad, easy oaken
stair-case up which the heroine of the Armada,
and the Queen of Scots' tragedy, is said to
have ridden to her dining-room, the tapestried
chamber, and the banquetting-hall please me;
but, far more, the ancient desolateness without
and around."

Now, we ask the large class, also, of the
wealthy and educated, whether they are
prepared to see these old places, with all their
historic associations, suddenly, and for ever,
destroyed? But there is another and still
more numerous class whom the same observer
notices on their way to the Forest. They are
daily in summer pouring out of London in
vans:—-

"With their looped-up curtains, their streaming
ribands, their bright colours, on they go, in
trains of ten and twenty, filled with happy
people. Sometimes whole troops of school-
boys, or school-girls, fill them, who sing all
together as they go out of the great Babel
into free nature. Sometimes they are servants,
youths and maidens, who have subscribed
their penny a week to the association to
which they belong, for those rural excursions.
Sometimes they are young people of another
class, mixed with husbands and wives, and
even little children. They are all bound for
Hampton Court, or Bushy Park, or the still
more favourite haunt of Epping Forest. They
have music. It plays as they go; and they
sing as they go. When the music is not
heard, or the singing, there is a merry clatter
of voices, of laughter, and of jokes. What
lords and princes are half so happy? Away
they stream, van after van, with their sumpter
wagon well stored, trotting on behind. All
doors are crowded, as they pass, to catch a
glimpse of so much human happiness. Behind
them lies the great brick- and-rnortar wilderness,
with all its labours and cares; before
them, for one long day, the green Forest.
Anon, they pour into it; they drive up to
some well-known public-house. They descend,
form into knots of twos, threes, and half-
dozens, or scores, and away into the woods.
Then, it were a long story to describe all
their wonderings, peerings, wanderings,
acclamations, leaping over bushes, slinging at