This was, however, not for the sake of the slaughter that might be perpetrated therein, but on account of their many beauties and the grateful shade which they afforded. Virgil was in many respects a modern in his love of scenery, though we doubt whether snow-clad mountains and craggy heights would have appealed to him as they have done to us during the short time that has elapsed since we have been able to see them without discomfort. When the Roman Empire was in the zenith of its glory, there does not seem to have been in Gaul or Britain any vast stretches of forest. The country was no doubt well wooded when we compare it with the France or England of to-day, for during the last two hundred years trees have been wantonly destroyed, to the great injury of agriculture as well as local beauty, for the sake of supplying land-owners with ready money. Long continued wars have also desolated the national forests for the sake of supplying timber to the shipbuilder. After the various invasions which desolated so many parts of the Roman Empire, large portions of Gaul reverted to a state of nature. Towns and villages were burned, their inhabitants slaughtered, or scattered far away from their homes. A picturesque account of what followed is given in Montalembert's _Les Moines d'Occident_, from which we gather that much of Gaul had reverted to a state of nature, such as it was in ere civilisation had made its first incursions on the untamed wilderness. The lives of the early Gallic saints, found scattered through the many volumes of the _Acta Sanctorum_, bear the like testimony, as do many parts of the old romances, the scenes of which so often lie in the trackless forest.