boles of trees, chasing of squirrels, fun, and
laughter. Some seat themselves in the shade;
some tender souls stroll on through shady
and mossy-winding way, lost in one another.
But the time for dinner is come, and is not
forgotten. There it is spread under a great
tree; and round gather the throng, and
there is much mirth over getting seated.
And then for the clatter of knives and
forks; the popping of porter and ginger-beer
bottles, and foaming of Bass's pale ale. After
dinner, pipes and cigars are lit, and the smoke
curls up among the green boughs, with a true
holiday curl. Talk, and laughter, and jokes
abound. After a while there is a challenge
for a leaping match; another for a race. The
music plays, the day rolls on, and it is time
to go. With green boughs, stripped, vigorously
and somewhat riotously, from many a tree,
they dress and adorn their several vans,
ascend, and away. If they sing in coming,
they sing tenfold in going back. All sing—-
men and women—- every heart is elate; with
a humming, chiming, sonorous sound, as of so
many great cages of singing birds, they roll
back iuto the great engulfing city."

But there is another and lower class which,
still more numerous, make its annual pilgrimages
into this forest, and who, if they are
penned in by the destruction of such places,
and the access to such innocent and healthy
excitement, will find excitements more serious,
and swell more voluminously the outbreak of
disorder and crime. We will take one more
scene and that from this class:—-

"Through the whole length and breadth
of the workshops of London; through all
Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, through the
Minories,and along Tower Hill, and up Shoreditch
and Clerkenwell, and to the very purlieus of
the Seven Dials, and across the water in Southwark,
has the important news flown that
blackberries are ripe, and mushrooms in the
forest turf. Like an electric thrill, it has
darted in far and wide; and the great workshop
soul, whether sweating over hot iron, or
steaming in dye-houses and batteries, whether
darting the shuttle amongst silken threads, or
moulding bread for the living, or clenching
nails in coffins for the dead, amid the hum of the
old vampire song ,—-

      " For when a dead man learns to draw a nail,
      He soon will burst an iron bar in two,"

everywhere there is but one thought—-
blackberries—- and one imagination, that of cool
breezes, the smell of fresh turf, and sounds
of the quivering leaves.

"It is a fever, a contagion, a frenzy. Try
to cure it, to crush it, to turn it aside; it is
vain! At midnight on Saturdays, and the
eves of holidays, out pour thousands of boys,
boy-men, and men-boys. Thousands of them
have never taken a moment's rest, but have
rushed forth from smutty shop and foetid
alley, to collect their forces, and are off. All
night, from twelve o'clock, I have heard them,
and have occasionally risen to have a look at
them in the light, gas-lit road. The breeze
may blow them, and the shower may wash
them, if they will, but that is all the cleaning
and the washing that they wait for. And
thus they stream along, the true rising
generation of swelterers and boilers, in cap and
jacket, and with basket on arm, or thrown
over the shoulder on a stick. * * *

"Good luck to them all! If blackberries
grew on every twig of every bush and tree in
all Epping Forest, what were they among so
many? But what of that? There is the
Forest, and freedom, and fresh air, and the
exhilaration of a great day, when thousands
on thousands are gone out on a holiday visit
to old Mother Nature! Anon you shall see
them coming back, filling all the road for
miles, and their baskets not over-loaded,
though some of them are carrying them on a
stick between two, like the messengers with
the bunch of grapes, returning from the
Promised Land."

And all this popular enjoyment, and enjoyment
of the true, healthy sort, is to vanish
from before an act of Parliament! For
what, and whose benefit? That is the
question. No doubt a great portion of the
Crown lands might, with great public advantage.
Both the public purse and the agricultural
interest of the nation would be the
better for it. Sherwood Forest, the renowned
retreat of Robin Hood, has long been utilised
into a common; and, as a common, is now
undergoing enclosure. A large tract of the New
Forest, which is a naked waste, might, with
equal advantage, be converted into fields, an
that without hurting the more beautiful woodland
portion. The Forest of Dean, and some
others, offer tempting tracts for enclosure,
against which not a voice would be raised.
But why is this London forest—- this actual
London park—- thus singled out alone for
dissection? Were large pecuniary advantages to
accrue from the enclosure to the nation, our
objection, in this particular instance, would
remain precisely the same; for no amount of
money is for a moment to be put in competition
with the health, the recreation, and the
morals of the people.

But let the public remember that this is
their own lawful property, and that if they
say nay—- no power on earth can deprive them
of it. They have purchased all the royal
forests of the crown, by an agreement, to give
to it a far better annual income than all these
lands can produce. Every yard of land, every
leaf in the forests, is the people's own: and if
this project is still pursued, it will be for them
to speak out, and demand that it shall remain
inviolate. We grievously suspect that the real
motive for the enclosure lies amongst the
proprietors of estates in the Forest itself. These
estates—- originally encroachments on the
people's property, or obtained in bargains from the
Crown in times of past corruption, the
conditions of which are best kept in the back-