THE WOODS. 



179 



we fallen and wandered, m that the herbs and fruits are 

 no longer the only things that are "to us for food," 

 and that man no longer spends all of his time amid 

 the trees, nor does he always protect and preserve the 

 virgin forests. Alas ! the desire for money has in this 

 instance as well as others been the root of all kinds of 

 evil. Commercialism and poetry do not often agree; 

 we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. Yet, thus 

 nurtured in his infancy in the forest, man has ever 

 loved it, and has walked among these giant fern-like 

 forms always, if involuntarily, with veneration — as if 

 with the experiences and memories of past centuries 

 still within him. 



It is not for many of us to be like the barons of 

 eld, and to behold deer cropping the grass in our own 

 demesnes, or to look about our walls upon rows of 

 mounted antlers, trophies of the chase. Nor shall we 

 often feast royally upon venison before the logs in 

 spacious manor halls, as is the picture in "Ivanhoe." 

 Yet we all turn to the wild at times instinctively; and, 

 can we but release for a moment this noble savagery 

 from the surfeit of the too intricate and over-studied 

 culture beneath which it now lies smothered, the woods 

 shall still be unto us a home and an abiding place, and 

 we shall again rejoice with Robin Hood and Little John 

 to hear the bow twang and see the stag leap in Sher- 

 wood Forest. 



For the forest, because of man's long joy of it, has 

 found its way into literature. 'T is there, at least, we 

 may all seek it, and betake ourselves thither to rest in 

 its shadows. Homer loved it; so did Vergil; and there 

 are passages of forest description in the Bible which are 



