Perennially; beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for future purpose deck'd
With unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes
May meet at moonlight. Fear, trembling Hope,
Silence, and Foresight, Death the skeleton,
And Time the shadow, there to celebrate
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of massy stone
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain-flood
Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves."

The yew is a funereal tree, and it wakes, as we think of it, many melancholy associations. It has been a funereal tree from time immemorial, and in many nations; it throws its shadows over the tombs of Greece: Egypt laid her mummies to hold their long and undisturbed repose in coffins of cypress and of yew. The Romans deemed the place where it grew consecrated to the memory of the dead; and in Britain its branches formed the shroud of the departed even now, in many villages of our country, it is laid around, within, and beneath the coffin in the grave.

But why linger merely around one or two children of the forest? The BEECH, the ELM, the ASH, and many another glorious and graceful form might well claim a word of love from all the lovers of Old England: sad only is it to reflect that the wood from trees so magnificent should frequently have been applied only to the bloody service of battle-field-that trees, the very types of peace, should bear the artillery and ammunition of war-and thus the most peaceable shades aid in pouring around the

earth the terror which, alas! Old England has been too emulous to bear.

Sitting upon an old stone in the New Forest some years since, we were moved to perpetrate the following, after some meditations like those in the earlier part of this paper. It is not of much account-but here or nowhere—so let it

go:

A MONODY FOR THE FOREST DAYS.

SENTIMENT.

Mourn for the ancient forest days—
They shall return no more;

Then the green oak trees flung their bays
Around our island shore :

Bright spears went glancing thro' the boughs—

The bugle's blast was loud—

The baron sped to gay carouse

Upon his charger proud.

Ah, forest days! Oh, brightly shone
The sun upon the leaves,

And cheerly rose the peasant's tone
Beneath his cottage eaves;

And royal was the household cheer
Beside the ingle blaze-

We ne'er shall see such times, I fear,

As those old forest days.

Oh, glorious time! when, thro' the realm,

The lordly cavalcade,

The wimple gay, the plumed helm,

Swept onward thro' the shade:

But now the golden forest days
Have long since passed away;

Baron and Lady, Thane and Thrall-
Oh, answer, where are they?

A TRENODY FOR THE FOREST DAYS.

COMMON SENSE.

Shout! for the ancient forest days-
They shall return no more:

Why should their gnarled branches hang,
A cloud from shore to shore?

Let corn-fields wave their golden sheaves,
And flocks in gladness graze,

And songs resound from cottage eaves
O'er those old forest days.

Who mourns the dark old forest time,
When outlaw'd Freedom came,
With haughty heart, and front sublime,
Though 'neath the brand of shame,
And tyrants raised that bloody brand
To strike the patriot down,
And seize with savage, felon hand,
His lordship for their own.

No! shout because the forest days
Have long since pass'd away:
The barons, in their mailed blaze-
Why, tell us where are they?

The truth they scorned, the race they scourged,

Spreads onwards everywhere,

While they, poor knaves, are left to feel

A tyrant's grim despair.

98

CHAPTER V.

OLD ENGLISH HEROES.

"Dear land of my fathers! fair Isle of the West!
To thee my soul clings, as a child to the breast;
It joys in thy joy, in thy sorrows it mourns;
And wherever it wanders to thee it returns.
So the Sun, in his course, through the regions of air
May smile, or may frown,-but he tarries not there;
His eye is still fix'd where alone he can rest,
And his steeds fly more swiftly, the nearer the West!

Beneath thy dark oaks, when the world was yet young,
Thy Bards and thy Druids their midnight hymns sung:
When the depth of the forest gleamed bright with their
fires,

And the night wind seem'd hush'd to the sound of their lyres.

Their round, roofless temples the gods ne'er confined,
For they taught that no fetters a spirit can bind;
And that life's but a gem on Eternity's breast;
In the ocean of Time,-a mere Isle of the West!

Though other lands boast of a sunnier clime,
Of rivers more rapid, and hills more sublime;
Would the wren love less fondly the place of her rest
Tho' small when compared with the eagle's huge nest?
Ah, no!-though less wildly thy rivers may flow,
The hall of my fathers is mirror'd below:
Though clouds may more often o'ershadow thy breast,
E'en clouds, too, are beauteous, when seen in the West!
STONEHENGE.

FROM the first days of England, the transition is natural to the heroes of Old England-the

Captains of the People, the Men of the Forests, who made the woods their shelter, from whence they pounced upon the Foe. Directly upon the Battle of Hastings appeared the celebrated leader, HEREWARD LE WAKE. Hereward, the Saxon, the son of Leofric, Earl of Chester and of that Lady Godiva, who has been immortalized in the annals of Coventry. From some private quarrel he was banished from his home, with only one attendant, and thus he was in exile during the invasion and after the Battle of Hastings. The legends of the time do not fail to give marvellous accounts of his travels and his adventures while away from England. He returned at the very instant that the Normans were about taking possession of his patrimonial inheritance. The Chroniclers preserve the names of his friends who, with him, put the Normans, in their neighbourhood, to swift flight. There was Leofric, the Mower, so called because, being once attacked by twenty armed men while he was mowing alone in the field, with nothing but his scythe to defend himself, he defeated them all, killing several, and wounding many. There was Leofrec, the Prat, or the Cunning, so called because, though repeatedly taken by his enemies, he had always escaped after having slain his keepers. There was Walric, the Black, so called, because he had blackened his face on one occasion, and thus unseen, had penetrated into the tent of his enemies, and killed ten before he made his retreat. There was Wulric, the Heron, so called, because as he was one day peeping over