The acorns are dropping now as they dropped five centuries since, in the days when the wild boars fed so greedily upon them; the oaks are broadly touched with brown; the bramble thickets in which the boars hid, green, but strewn with the leaves that have fallen from the lofty trees. Though meadow, arable, and hop-fields hold now the place of the forest, a goodly remnant remains, for every hedge is full of oak and elm and ash; maple too, and the lesser bushes. At a little distance, so thick are the trees, the whole country appears a wood, and it is easy to see what a forest it must have been centuries ago. The Prince leaving the grim walls of the Tower of London by the Water-gate, and dropping but a short way down with the tide, could mount his horse on the opposite bank, and reach his palace here, in the midst of the thickest woods and wildest country, in half an hour. Thence every morning setting forth upon the chase, he could pass the day in joyous labours, and the evening in feasting, still within call--almost within sound of horn--of the Tower, if any weighty matter demanded his presence. In our time, the great city has widened out, and comes at this day down to within three miles of the hunting-palace. There still intervenes a narrow space between the last house of London and the ancient Forest Hall, a space of corn-field and meadow; the last house, for although not nominally London, there is no break of continuity in the bricks and mortar thence to London Bridge. London is within a stone's-throw, as it were, and yet, to this day the forest lingers, and it is country. The very atmosphere is different. That smoky thickness characteristic of the suburbs ceases as you ascend the gradual rise, and leave the outpost of bricks and mortar behind. The air becomes clear and strong, till on the brow by the spring on a windy day it is almost like sea-air. It comes over the trees, over the hills, and is sweet with the touch of grass and leaf. There is no gas, no sulphurous acid in that. As the Edwards and Henries breathed it centuries since, so it can be inhaled now. The sun that shone on the red deer is as bright now as then; the berries are thick on the bushes; there is colour in the leaf. The forest is gone; but the spirit of nature stays, and can be found by those who search for it. Dearly as I love the open air, I cannot regret the mediaeval days. I do not wish them back again, I would sooner fight in the foremost ranks of Time. Nor do we need them, for the spirit of nature stays, and will always be here, no matter to how high a pinnacle of thought the human mind may attain; still the sweet air, and the hills, and the sea, and the sun, will always be with us. ON THE LONDON ROAD