sh mountains, which
at either end descend to a fertile plain shaded by thousands of lofty
trees, and in the obscure distance, where it blends with the sky, is
edged with a white misty line--the Atlantic Ocean."

Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, is remarkable for the following tradition
concerning it: In Charles II.'s reign it was bought by the duke of
Monmouth, whose widow--she who

In pride of youth, in beauty's bloom,
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb--

is said to have ordered the heads of the trees in the park to be cut
off on being informed of her husband's execution. This tradition is
strengthened by the condition of many of the oaks here, which are
decayed from the top. The duchess sold the place in 1720, thirty-five
years after the duke's death. This is the Moor Park of apricot fame,
but not the one where Sir William Temple lived when Swift was his
secretary.

Most of the oldest and finest trees in England are naturally to be
found in the deer-parks. At Woburn, the duke of Bedford's, is the
largest ash--ninety feet high and twenty-three feet six inches in
circumference at the base. The Abbot's Oak, on which the last abbot
was hung, stands, or lately stood, here. It is remarkable that oaks
are more often struck by lightning than any other trees. At Tortworth,
Lord Ducie's, in Gloucestershire, is a chestnut asserted to have been
a boundary tree in the time of King John. So late as 1788 it produced
great quantities of chestnuts. At five feet from the ground this tree
measured fifty feet in circumference.

The lover of fine trees should wander through the glades of Lord
Leigh's park at Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire, where tall and shapely
oaks grow with such symmetry that you do not guess their size, and are
surprised to discover on measuring them how great it is.

Oh, how I love these solitudes
And places silent as the night--
There where no thronging multitudes
Disturb with noise their sweet delight!
Oh, how mine eyes are pleased to see
Oaks that such spreading branches bear,
Which, from old Time's nativity,
And th' envy of so many years,
Are still green, beautiful and fair
As at the world's first day they were!

Writing of the confines of the ancient forest of Sherwood, Mr. Howitt
says of those sylvan delights: "The great woods have fallen under the
axe, and repeated enclosures have reduced the open forests, but at
the Clipstone end still remains a remnant of its ancient