86 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



taming there into a lane, and crossing the Trent by a 

 footbridge, in less than balf-an-honr passing . through a 

 gate, you step suddenly from cultivated fields to the wild 

 wastes of Channock. Rounded slopes rise before you 

 covered with fern, heather, and gorse, offering to the way- 

 farer some of the attractions of a hill country. I followed 

 the trackway along the hollow for a while, then struck 

 across the heights anywhither, and found ere long that 

 which I sought — solitude. There, in a ferny coomb, a 

 little world within itself, I lay down and indulged in a 

 day-dream, such as can only be dreamt in a secret place, 

 under bright sunshine, while your eye roams afar in the 

 expanse of blue, and from distant tree-tops there comes 

 the sound as if of an aSrial chorus. 



" I rambled farther and descended into a woody dell on 

 the edge of a park, and explored the course of a brooklet 

 which, clear as crystal, and cool as an underground spring, 

 gambols along beneath the thick shadow, now overhung 

 by alders, now bordered by thistles taller than a man, 

 while birches shut all out with their trembling screen. The 

 way is difficult in some places, with treacherous spongy 

 patches, and uncertain footing, but it entices you onward, 

 regaling your nostril with the scent of mint, and you will 

 be reluctant to turn back short of the livel}' springs from 

 which the brooklet takes its rise. Shortbrook the natives 

 call it, and truly its course to the Trent is of the briefest. 



" Then forcing a passage through the dense bracken on 

 the oppesite slope of the dell, I mounted to the boldest of 

 the fir-crowned heights, exchanging the calm sultriness of 

 the hollows for a lusty breeze, and narrow limits for a 

 wide-spread view. Singularly contracted is the prospect ; 

 eastwards the fertile vale of Trent, chequered with 

 the warm tints of harvest, with farms and villages, 

 seemingly half-buried in abundant vegetation; west- 

 wards the huge rolling undulations of the Chase, stretching 

 away for miles — a vast solitude, with here and there a 

 hardy fir, looking half-starved in its loneliness. Far off 



