village will have to be
removed. It is all very sad. As a writer in a London paper says:
"Under the best of conditions it is impossible to think of such an
eviction without sympathy for the grief that it must surely cause to
some. The younger residents may contemplate it cheerfully enough; but
for the elder folk, who have spent lives of sunshine and shade, toil,
sorrow, joy, in this peaceful vale, it must needs be that the removal
will bring a regret not to be lightly uttered in words. The soul of
man clings to the localities that he has known and loved; perhaps, as
in Wales, there will be some broken hearts when the water flows in
upon the scenes where men and women have met and loved and wedded,
where children have been born, where the beloved dead have been laid
to rest."

The old forests are not safe. The Act of 1851 caused the destruction
of miles of beautiful landscape. Peacock, in his story of _Gryll
Grange_, makes the announcement that the New Forest is now enclosed,
and that he proposes never to visit it again. Twenty-five years of
ruthless devastation followed the passing of that Act. The deer
disappeared. Stretches of open beechwood and green lawns broken by
thickets of ancient thorn and holly vanished under the official axe.
Woods and lawns were cleared and replaced by miles and miles of
rectangular fir plantations. The Act of 1876 with regard to forest
land came late, but it, happily, saved some spots of sylvan beauty.
Under the Act of 1851 all that was ancient and delightful to the eye
would have been levelled, or hidden in fir-wood. The later Act stopped
this wholesale destruction. We have still some lofty woods, still some
scenery that shows how England looked when it was a land of blowing
woodland. The New Forest is maimed and scarred, but what is left is
precious and unique. It is primeval forest land, nearly all that
remains in the country. Are these treasures safe? Under the Act of
1876 managers are told to consider beauty as well as profit, and to
abstain from destroying ancient trees; but much is left to the
decision and to the judgment of officials, and they are not always to
be depended on.

After having been threatened with demolition for a number of years,
the famous Winchmore Hill Woods are at last to be hewn down and the
land is to be built upon. These woods, which it was Hood's and Charles
Lamb's delight to stroll in, have become the property of a syndicate,
which will issue a prospectus