There, it would be a knot of sun-burned Saxon woodmen, in their green frocks and buckram hose, with long bows in their hands, short swords and quivers at their sides, and bucklers of a span-breadth on their shoulders, men who had never acknowledged Norman king, nor bowed to Norman yoke, who would stand at gaze, marking the party, from the jaws of some bosky dingle, too proud to yield a foot, yet too few to attack; proving that to be well accompanied, in those days, in Sherwood, was a matter less of pomp than of sound policy. Anon, receiving notice of their approach from the repeated bugle-blasts of his verdurers, as they passed each successive _mere_ or forest-station, a Norman knight or noble, in his garb of peace, would gallop down some winding wood-path, with his slender train scattering far behind him, to greet his brother in arms, and pray him to grace his tower by refreshing his company and resting his fair and gentle daughter for a few days or hours, within its precincts. In short, whether in the forest or in the open country, scarcely an hour, never a day, was passed, without their encountering some pleasant sight, some amusing incident, some interesting adventure. There was a vast fund of romance in the daily life of those olden days, an untold abundance of the picturesque, not a little, indeed, of what we should call stage-effect, in the ordinary habits and every-day affairs of men, which we have now, in our busy, headlong race for affluence, ambition, priority, in every thing good or evil, overlooked, if not forgotten. Life was in England then, as it was in France up to the days of the Revolution, as it never has been at any time in America, as it is nowhere now, and probably never will be any where again, unless we return to the primitive, social equality, and manful independence of patriarchal times; when truth was held truth, and manhood manhood, the world over; and some higher purpose in mortality was acknowledged than the mere acquiring, some larger nobleness in man than the mere possessing, of unprofitable wealth. Much of life, then, was spent out of doors; the mid-day meal, the mid-day slumber, the evening dance, were enjoyed, alike by prince and peasant, under the shadowy forest-tree, or the verdure of the trellised bower. The use of flowers was universal; in every rustic festival, of the smallest rural hamlets, the streets would be arched and garlanded with wreaths of wild flowers; in every village hostelry, the chimney would be filled with fresh greens, the board decked with eglantine and hawthorn, the beakers crowned with violets and cowslips, just as in our days the richest ball-rooms, the grandest banquet-halls, are adorned with brighter, if not sweeter or more beautiful, exotics.