126 UNDER THE TREES. 



talk about and plan our long-delayed journey 

 thither. 



&quot;After all,&quot; said Rosalind, on that first glorious 

 morning in Arden, &quot; as I look back I see that we 

 were always on the way here.&quot; 



in. 

 Well, this is the Forest of Arden. 



THE first sensation that comes to one who finds 

 himself at last within the boundaries of the Forest 

 of Arden is a delicious sense of freedom. I am 

 not sure that there is not a certain sympathy with 

 outlawry in that first exhilarating consciousness of 

 having gotten out of the conventional world the 

 world whose chief purpose is that all men shall 

 wear the same coat, eat the same dinner, repeat the 

 same polite commonplaces, and be forgotten at last 

 under the same epitaph. Forests have been the 

 natural refuge of outlaws from the earliest time, 

 and among the most respectable persons there has 

 always been an ill-concealed liking for Robin Hood 

 and the whole fraternity of the men of the bow. 

 Truth is above all things characteristic of the 

 dwellers in Arden, and it must be frankly confessed 

 at the beginning, therefore, that the Forest is given 

 over entirely to outlaws ; those who have commit 

 ted some grave offense against the world of con 

 ventions, or who have voluntarily gone into exile 



