2 The Nciv Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



the Alps." We have, on the contrary, in these days gone into 

 an opposite extreme. We race off to explore the Rhine before 

 we know the Thames. We have Alpine clubs, and Norway 

 fishing, and Iceland exploring societies, but most of us are 

 beyond measure ignorant of our own hills and valleys. Every 

 inch of Mont Blanc has been traversed by .Englishmen, but who 

 dreams of exploring the Cotswolds ; or how many can tell in 

 what county are the Seven Springs, and their purple anemones ? 

 We rush to and fro, looking at everything, and remembering 

 nothing. We see places only that we may be seen there, or else 

 be known to have seen them. 



Yet to Englishmen, surely the scenes of their own land 

 should possess a greater interest than any other. Go where we 

 will throughout England, there is no spot which is not bound 

 up with our history. Nameless barrows, ruined castles, battle- 

 fields now reaped by the sickle instead of the sword, all proclaim 

 the changes our country has undergone. Each invasion which 

 we have suffered, each revolution through which we have passed, 

 are written down for us in unmistakeable characters. The 

 phases of our Religion, the rise or fall of our Art, are alike told 

 us by the grey mouldings and arches of the humblest parish 

 Church as by our Abbeys and Cathedrals. The faces, too, and 

 gait, and dialect, and accent, of our peasantry declare to us 

 our common ancestry from Kelt, and Old-English, and Norse- 

 man. A whole history lies hid in the name of some obscure 

 village. 



I am not, for one moment, decrying travelling elsewhere. 

 All I say is, that those who do not know their own country, 

 can know nothing rightly of any other. To understand the 

 scenery of our neighbours, we must first see something of the 

 beauties of our own ; so that when we are abroad, we may be 



