The Open Air 



hall of a palace of old times, in which kings and 

 princes once sat at their meat after the chase. This 

 is the centre of those dim stories which float like haze 

 over the meadows around. Many a wild red stag has 

 been carried thither after the hunt, and many a wild 

 boar slain in the glades of the forest. 



The acorns are dropping now as they dropped five 

 centuries since, in the days when the wild boars fed 

 so greedily upon them ; the oaks are broadly touched 

 with brown ; the bramble thickets in which the boars 

 hid, green, but strewn with the leaves that have fallen 

 from the lofty trees. Though meadow, arable, and 

 hop-fields hold now the place of the forest, a goodly 

 remnant remains, for every hedge is full of oak and 

 elm and ash; maple too, and the lesser bushes. At 

 a little distance, so thick are the trees, the whole 

 country appears a wood, and it is easy to see what a 

 forest it must have been centuries ago. 



The Prince leaving the grim walls of the Tower of 

 London by the Water-gate, and dropping but a short 

 way down with the tide, could mount his horse on 

 the opposite bank, and reach his palace here, in the 

 midst of the thickest woods and wildest country, in 

 half an hour. Thence every morning setting forth 

 upon the chase, he could pass the day in joyous 

 labours, and the evening in feasting, still within call 

 almost within sound of horn of the Tower, if any 

 weighty matter demanded his presence. 



In our time, the great city has widened out, and 

 comes at this day down to within three miles of the 

 hunting-palace. There still intervenes a narrow space 

 between the last house of London and the ancient 

 Forest Hall, a space of corn-field and meadow; the 

 last house, for although not nominally London, there 

 is no break of continuity in the bricks and mortar 



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