JULY. 191 



" Hampden with dauntless breast" to " with- 

 stand the petty tyrants of the fields" and to 

 save our good old foot-paths ? If not, we shall 

 in a few years be doomed to the highways and 

 the hedges ; to look, like Dives, from a sultry 

 region of turnpikes, into a pleasant one of ver- 

 dure and foliage which we may not approach. 

 Already the stranger, if he lose his way, is in 

 jeopardy of falling into the horrid fangs of a 

 steel trap ; the botanist enters a wood to gather 

 a flower, and is shot with a spring-gun ; death 

 haunts our dells and copses, and the poet com- 

 plains, in regretful notes, that he 



Wanders away to the field and glen, 

 Far as he may for the gentlemen. 



I am not so much of a poet, and so little of a 

 political economist, as to lament over the pro- 

 gress of population. It is true that I see, with 

 a poetical regret, green fields and fresh beau- 

 tiful tracts swallowed up in cities ; but my joy 

 in the increase of human life and happiness, far 

 outbalances that imaginative pain. But it is 

 when I see unnecessary and arbitrary encroach- 

 ments upon the rural privileges of the public, 

 that I grieve. Exactly in the same proportion 

 as our population and commercial habits gain 

 upon us, do we need all possible opportunities 

 to keep alive in us the spirit of Nature. 



