who own
castles in Spain!

In the Forest of Arden there is no such brave show of battlement and
rampart. In all our rambles we never came upon a castle or palace; in
fact, so far as I remember, no one ever spoke of such structures. They
seem to have no place there. Nor is it hard to understand this
singular divergence from the ways of a world whose habits and standards
are continually reversed in the Forest. In castle and palace, the
wealth and splendour of life--everything that gives it grace and beauty
to the eye--are treasured within massive walls and protected from the
common gaze and touch. Every great park, with its reaches of inviting
sward and its groups of noble trees, seems to say to those who pass
along the highway: "We are too rare for your using." Every stately
palace, with its wonderful paintings and hangings, its sculpture and
furnishings, locks its massive gates against the great world without,
as if that which it guards were too precious for common eyes. In Arden
no one dreams of fencing off a lovely bit of open meadow or a cluster
of great trees; private ownership is unknown in the Forest. Those who
dwell there are tenants in common of a grander estate than was ever
conquered by sword, purchased by gold, or bequeathed by the laws of
descent. There are homes for privacy, for the sanctities of love and
friendship; but the wealth of life is common to all. Instead of
elegant houses, and a meagre, inferior public life, as in the great
cities of the world, there are modest homes and a noble common life.
If the houses in our cities were simple and home-like in their
appointments, and all their treasures of art and beauty were lodged in
noble structures, open to every citizen, the world would know something
of the habits of those who find in Arden that satisfying thought of
life which is denied them among men. Moderation, simplicity, frugality
for our private and personal wants; splendid profusion, noble
lavishness, beautiful luxury for that common life which now languishes
because so few recognise its needs. When will the world learn the real
lesson of civilisation, and, for the cheap and ignoble aspect of modern
cities, bring back the stateliness of Rome and the beauty of that
wonderful city whose poetry and art were but the voices of her common
life?

The murmuring stream at our door in Arden whispered to us by day and by
night the sweet secret of the happiness in the Forest, where no man
st