so long a day amid such novel
surroundings. The only thing to disturb the solitude is
the clank of machinery; and the lurid lights, as we pass a
colliery; and then a mile of two more with but the sound
of our own wheels and the rhythm of the horses' feet, and
we suddenly draw up at an hotel in the midst of the Forest,
its quiet well-lighted interior inviting us through the doorway,
left open to the cool summer night air. We are at the Speech
House. We had bespoken our rooms by wire in the morning:
Senator Hoar had a _chambre d'honneur,_ with a gigantic carved
four-post bed that reminded him of the great bed of Ware.
His room like my "No. 5," looked out over magnificent bays
of woodland to the north. The Speech House is six hundred
feet above the sea, and the mountain breeze coming through
the wide open window, with this wonderful prospect of oak
and beech and holly in the moonlight,--the distance veiled,
but scarcely veiled, by the mist, suggest a poem untranslatable
in words, and incommunicable except to those who have passed
under the same spell. We speak of a light that makes darkness
visible; and similarly there are sounds that deepen the long
intervals of silence with which they alternate. One or two
vehicles driving past; now and then the far-off call of owls
answering one another in the woods--one of the sweetest sounds
in nature--the varying cadence carrying with it a sense of
boundlessness and infinite distance; and with it we fall asleep.

If there is anything more beautiful than a moonlight summer
night in the heart of the Forest of Dean, it is its transformation
into a summer morning, with the sparkle of dew on the grass,
and the sunrise on the trees; with the music of birds, and
the freshness that gives all these their charm.

As soon as we are dressed we take a stroll out among the trees.
In whichever direction we turn we are struck by the abundance
of hollies. I believe there are some three thousand full
grown specimens within a radius of a mile of the Speech House.
This may be due to the spot having been from time immemorial
the central and most important place in the Forest. The roads
that lead to it still show the Roman paving-stones in many
places, as Senator Hoar can bear witness; and the central
point of a British Forest before the Roman time would be occupied
by a sacred oak. The Forest into which Julius Caesar pursued
the Britons to their stronghold, was Anderida, that is, the
Holy