Here waving groves a chequer'd scene display, And part admit, and part exclude the day; As some coy nymph her lover's warm address Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress. There interspers'd in lawns and op'ning glades, Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades. Here in full light the russet plains extend: There wrapt in clouds the bluish hills ascend. Ev'n the wild heath displays her purple dyes; And 'midst the desert fruitful fields arise, That, crown'd with tufted trees and springing corn, Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn. "Even the wild heath" is lit up by indulgent condescension in a poet of that periwigged period. Still this corner has large stretches of obstinate heath, sandy swells, boggy hollows, and sheets of gravel, which, given up by Ceres in despair, have been taken on easy terms by Mars. About two generations ago the God of War became a tenant in Surrey. Ever since standing armies had to be lodged, they would be quartered from time to time on the wastes near London--Blackheath, dark with the frowns of Cromwell's veterans when they beheld the fugitive of Worcester return in triumph; Hounslow Heath, on which the Roman soldiery were drilled in their day; and Finchley Common, where the Guards would now find scanty space for a bivouac. It seems to have been the Prince Consort who started or at least fostered the idea of camps of training and exercise on Surrey heaths. The first of these was at Chobham, in the summer before the Crimean War, after which was formed the more permanent camp at Aldershot. What a delightful novelty to Londoners was that military picnic may be seen in the faithful pages of _Punch_, setting forth the hardships of dandy guardsmen cramped in small room, the indiscreet curiosity of crinolined ladies, and the irreverence of small boys towards kilts and bearskins. After forty years of peace, the pomp and circumstance of war was something of a joke, as well as a sentiment, to that generation, as it was becoming for ours, till South Africa taught "duke's son and cook's son" what a serious business is the great game of kings, that may in future be stigmatised rather as the sport of newspapers.