h Welsh, who were always the most dangerous
enemies the Romans had in Britain. Similarly, at Chester,
the freemen's lands are on the west, or enemy's side, by the
Dee. In Bath it was the same.

Immediately after passing "Over" Bridge we might turn off,
it time permitted, to see Lassington Oak, a tree of giant
size and unknown age; but as Emerson says--

There's not enough for this and that--
Make thy option which of two!

and we make ours for Lydney. A dozen miles drive, often
skirting the right bank of the Severn, brings us to Newnham,
a picturesque village opposite a vast bend, or horse-shoe,
of the river, and over which we get a beautiful view from
the burial ground on the cliff. The water expands like a
lake, beyond which the woods, house-interspersed, stretch
away to the blue Cotteswold Hills; the monument to William
Tyndale being a landmark on one of them--Nibley Knoll. Just
under that monument was fought the last great battle between
Barons. This battle of Nibley Knoll, between Lord Berkeley
and Lord Lisle, left the latter dead on the field, at night,
with a thousand of the men of the two armies; and made Lord
Berkeley undisputed master of the estates whose name he bore.

We now leave the river, and turn inland; and in a short time
we have entered the Forest of Dean proper; that is, the lands
that belong to the Crown. Their area may be roughly set down
as fifteen miles by ten; but in the time of the Conqueror,
and for many years after, it was much larger; extending from
Ross on the north, to Gloucester on the east, and thence thirty
miles to Chepstow on the south-west. That is, it filled the
triangle formed by the Severn and the Wye between these towns.
It is doubtless due to this circumstance of its being so completely
cut off from the rest of the country by these rivers that
it has preserved more remarkably than any other Forest, the
characteristics and customs of ancient British life, to which
we shall presently refer; for their isolation has kept the
Dean Foresters to this hour a race apart.

Sir James Campbell, who was for between thirty and forty years
the chief "Verderer," or principal government officer of the
Forest, lives near Lydney. He received us with great kindness,
and gave us statistics of the rate of grown of the oak, both
with and without transplantation. Part of them are published
in an official report on the Forest (A 12808. 6/1884. Wt.
3276. Eyre & Spottiswoode, Lond