MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



so wholly forgotten that it was commonly 

 interpreted as a means of impressing the 

 boundaries on their memories a foolish 

 gloss of the usual fatuous eighteenth-century 

 rationalizing type. Thus the Gospel Oak 

 at Cheriton is now only remembered as the 

 tree under which the Gospel was read at 

 the perambulation of the bounds ; the 

 Crouch Oak at Addlestone has sunk into 

 a prosaic legal boundary-mark of Windsor 

 Forest ; and the Twelve Apostles at Burley, 

 near Ringwood, now reduced to five, have 

 been finally Christianized out of all recog- 

 nition, so that I cannot even conjecturally 

 reconstruct their original dedication to some 

 ancient Celtic or Teutonic deities. 



182 



