82 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



itself before the eye here. There are in many ways 

 few aspects of life more impressive than the awaken- 

 ing of nature on the fringes of a great city, and there 

 are not many points of vantage better than this. 

 Far below, the rows of houses and streets spread 

 away on every side, the southern outskirts of the 

 great circle, twenty miles across, which London 

 occupies. Away to the north, farther in, though 

 still only in the outer zone, rises the last ridge which 

 shuts in the Thames valley ; on its crest the gaunt 

 glass structure of the Crystal Palace sits darkly on 

 the horizon. Behind, to the south, stretch the downs 

 we have traversed in the night. Between lies a 

 great suburban land of brick buildings, new for the 

 most part, here ranged in great solid blocks deep 

 and wide, there straggling loosely apart. Every- 

 where between rise tall trees, now dark in their full 

 summer foliage, the last survivors of that great North 

 Wood in which, down almost into recent times, the 

 charcoal-burners plied their trade the North Wood 

 which still gives its name to the district of Norwood, 

 and which was so called to distinguish it from the other 

 great wood, the Southern Weald, which stretched 

 through Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. It is a fair land 

 still, as it sleeps now under a cloudless sky out of 

 which the stars have not yet faded, a battle-field 

 withal a land upon which the invading Celt and 

 Roman and Saxon has in turn left his hand, it is 

 true but a battlefield, most of all, where nature 

 fights year after year a losing stand against the 

 blighting and despoiling forces of civilization. 



Hark ! There comes now the first sound from 

 below. It is a thrush tuning for the opening 

 symphony. After a few tentative notes it bursts 



