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With such old counsellors they did advise, 



And, by frequenting sacred groves, grew wise. 



Free from the impediments of light and noise, 



Man, thus retir'd, his noblest thoughts employs." WALLER. 



VALLEYS and cultivated fields, have each their charac- 

 teristics of richness or of loveliness, but they have 

 no beauty in comparison with that of woodland scenery. 

 The wild thyme and moss, the short-cropped herbage, 

 the tufts of fern and golden-blossomed gorse, that vary 

 the ground on which we tread ; the solemn depth of the 

 lone forest, the noble groups of trees that diversify the 

 open spaces, and the clear streams that flow silently 

 through the deep soil, bordered with cowslips and wild 

 marigolds, have all, and each, their own peculiar attrac- 

 tions. Who has not been sensible when passing among 

 them of an hilarity of feeling, a delight, which he 

 has experienced nowhere else, which carries him onward 

 from one spot to another, now in the midst of trees, 

 and now again in the open space, as if he could 

 never weary ? Then, the sweet fresh breezes of the 

 spring, how pure they are, sporting over the green herb- 

 age or among the trees. They are not infected with 

 sighs of human sorrow ; they have not passed beside the 

 couch of dying men, or through the throng of a great city. 

 They are sporting now as they sported a thousand years 

 ago, among the branches of some of the old trees, which 

 still remain, relics of bygone days, memorials of what 

 has been. Those breezes are still the same, for the 



