48 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



present condition is certainly, for many reasons, the best. 

 The time will some day arrive when, as England be- 

 comes more and more overcrowded, as each heath and 

 common are swallowed up, the New Forest will be as much 

 a necessity to the country as the parks are now to London, 

 We talk about the duty of reclaiming waste lands, and making 

 corn spring up where none before grew. But it is often 

 as much a duty to leave them alone. Land has higher and 

 nobler offices to perform than to support houses or grow corn 

 to nourish not so much the body as the mind of man, to gladden 

 the eye with its loveliness, and to brace his soul with that 

 strength which is alone to be gained in the solitude of the moors 

 and the woods. 



The Woodcutter's Track, between Mark Ash and Winding Shoot. 



