200 WINDSOfi FOREST AKD ITS FAMOUS TREES. 



■ — you could do nothing with these domains that would be more to the 

 enjoyment of the nation at large than is afforded by their present 

 state. They belong literally to all of us. Sir E,. Walpole is re- 

 ported to have been interrogated by George the First as to what it 

 would cost to make St. James's Park a turnip-field, turnips being 

 then a new acquisition as a green crop. He replied, " Only three 

 Crowns, your Majesty," — so deeply would the country have re- 

 sented its historical play- ground in London being interfered with. 

 And we may confidently declare that there are no waste lands in 

 this country in the pleasure-lands. There is nothing you could do 

 with them that would not be a national loss. I may put it to you 

 that it would be a loss to all Watford if Cassiobury Park were cut 

 up for trim villas or laid out with snug cottages. "What we want is 

 that intelligent education of the people at large which may incline 

 them to be satisfied with simple pleasures. 



I will not press you with the hackneyed line of the indoors-poet 

 Cowper, who in the " Sofa " and the " Task " wrote : 



" God made the country and man made the town." 



But you will be tolerant and perhaps interested if I close with the 

 following passage from the facetious Sydney Smith. It will be a 

 surprise to you, probably, as showing how much more depth of 

 feeling a man has than he is credited with. It has also a very 

 natural-history flavour or tone, though I have taken upon me to 

 accommodate an expression or two. " There is a moral as well as 

 bodily wholesomeness in a [country] walk if the walker has the 

 understanding heart and eschews picnics ! It is good for a man to 

 be alone with Nature and himself ; or with a friend who knows 

 when silence is more sociable than talk, 



' In the wilderness above 

 There where Nature worships God.' 



It is well to be in places where man is little, and God is great ; 

 where what he sees around him has the same look it wore a 

 thousand years ago, and will have the same look most likely when 

 he shall have been a thousand years in his grave. It abates and 

 rectifies a man, if he be worth the process. In cities, all is human 

 policy, human foresight, human power. Nothing reminds us of 

 invisible dominion and concealed omnipotence. It is all earth and 

 no heaven. One cure of this is the [forest] and the solitary place. 

 As the body harassed with the noxious air of towns seeks relief in 

 the freedom and purity of the fields and hills, so the mind, wearied 

 by commerce with men, resumes its vigour in solitude and restores 

 its tone by looking up from Nature unto Nature's God." 



