THE FLORAL WORLD 



AND 



GAEDEN GUIDE. 



OCTOBETi. 1866. 



THE BEACKEX. 



HOPE to remember to the end of m)"- days tlie great 

 playground where, when a very small boy, I made 

 acquaintance with the glories of the Bracken. My 

 playground comprised the whole extent of AV^anstead 

 Flats, and Epping and Hainhault Eorests, where, forty 

 years ago, the abominable process of "enclosing" had scarcely 

 commenced, and we used in the summer to ramble free and un- 

 challenged over miles and miles of ling, tormentil, cinquefoil, and 

 elastic fescue-grass ; and in the tender days of spring hunt for violets, 

 primroses, and wild hyacinths in the bosky dells where thrushes aud 

 blackbirds hid themselves to sing, and the giant oaks threw their 

 dark arms about to protect the solitude from unseemly iuvasion. 

 The oaks are felled, the thousands of acres of furze and broom, and 

 holly and blackberry, the millions of alders, the deep ferny water 

 channels where the snake basked in the sun, and the dry hummocks 

 where the rabbits gambolled at dusk— all, all are " enclosed ; " that 

 is to say, stolen ; and where Beauty reigned in calm security, Wrong 

 has established an infamous court, and the people have lost their 

 forests, that a few thieves, known in their several districts as 

 "gentlemeu," might enjoy uninterrupted possession of ill-gotten 

 lands. The statute of Merton is the darkest blot on the British 

 book of laws ; it has given the power of plunder to a class already 

 well possessed, and fulfilled, in the interests of Satan, our Saviour's 

 words, " To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not 

 shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to ha\'e." The 

 poor are now shut out from the green dimples and flowery slopes, 

 where, but a few years since, the humblest toiler might thank God 

 for a breath of bracing air aud a contemplation of Nature's loveli- 

 ness. Those forests have shrunk to such miserable proportions, and 

 are so cut up with new roads, fraudulent fences, and new land- 

 marks, which greed has designed to screen from view the extent of 

 the wrong, that none who knew them forty years ago could view them 

 now without the heart-ache. My heart ached lately as I drove 

 through spots where in years gone b)^ sylvan beauty entranced the 

 artist and filled the dreamer with a new joy, and found, instead of 



