THE FOREST i6i 



Kingsley, as he was then, and Mr. Johns were old friends 

 and brother natiiraHsts. I remember, one July afternoon, 

 Mr. Kingsley taking our class in Xenophon. We felt 

 flattered, but nervous. In the first three or four sentences 

 we came to r]v Se /ie'ya? TrapdSsia-os. He forgot all about the 

 rest of the lesson, and went off into a ringing description of 

 hunting cheetahs and Persian greyhounds, and bustard and 

 florican, and antelope. And then, having made us see the 

 irapdhsKTos, he told us about the Chase at Bramshill, and its 

 Scotch and silver firs, and the bishop who shot the forester 

 by mistake and built the almshouses at Guildford to his 

 memory. 



One of the happiest days of the year at that happy school 

 was Avhen we all went down to Lyndhurst to hunt white 

 admirals and fritillaries. Twice, I think, Mr. Kingsley came 

 with us. I can see him now, with his trousers turned up high 

 over famous lace-boots and a butterfly-net and collecting- 

 box, coursing a purple hair-streak over an intricate country, 

 in the hope of catching it before it spired — which is the 

 way of purple hair-streaks — into the high oak-tops. But 

 I remember something better than that. I can hear him 

 viewing away a fox we put out of a snug patch of whitethorn . 

 His scream was as ' remarkable and susceptible ' as Jack 

 Eaven's. 



At three-and-twenty, Kingsley tells us, his brains were 

 full of bison and grizzly bear, mustang, bighorn, and ad- 

 venture ; but, fortunately for us, these things were not 

 for him. Had it been otherwise, ' Westward Ho ! ' and 

 ' Hypatia ' might never have been written. His lines fell 

 in quiet places, amongst quiet people. Eversley is close to 

 Bramshill, on the skirts of the Hampshire moorlands. It 

 is not in the forest proper, which, I suppose, is confined to 

 Windsor and Swinley Forests ; but the country round 

 Eversley and Bramshill is still rougher and wilder. The 



