The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1853-11-03

cuted Saxons, had fed in their extremity.
Id is from these industrious artisans, then the
scorn of the high. born men. at arms, that the
trade had its origin, which has filed the bleak
moors, and every torrent gorge OF Lancaster
and Western York, with teeming population
and manufacturing opulence, such as else
where the wide earth has not witnessed. Even
at the time of which write, the clack of their
fulling mills, the click of their looms, and the
din of their trip-hammers, resounded by the
side of many lonely Cheshire stream; but
all TO the north and westward where the wild
est hill.sdes and most forbidding glens are
now more populous and richer than the great
est cities of those days all was desoate as the
aspect of the scenery and inhospitable as eli
mate that lowers over in constant mist and
darkness.
Only in the southwestern corner of West
moreland, tho lovely land of lakes and noun
taius and green pastoral glens, beyond More
Gamble bay and the treacherous sands of Lam
caster, had the Norman MOBILES, as the entering
tide swept upward through the romantic glens
and ghyls OF Netherdale and Rharledale, past
the dim peaks Of PenDigant and Ingleborough
established their lines in those pleasant places
and reared their castellated towers and laid
out their noble chases, where they had little
interruption to apprehend from the tyrsnnic
forest laws of the Norman kings which, whore
ever their authority extended, bore not more
harshly on the Saxon serf than on the Norman
noble.
To return, however, toward tho midland
counties and the rich regions with which this
brief survey of Northern England in the early
years of the twelfth century commencsd-a
vast tract Of country, including much of the
northern portions of Nottingham and Derby
shire, and all the south of the West Riding of
York, between the rivers Trent and Eyre, was
occupied almost exclusively by that most beau
tiful and famous of all British forests, the i'm
memorial and time -honored Sherwood-theme
of the oldest and most popular Of English bal
lads-scene Of the most stirring of the old Ro-
maunts-scene of the most magnificent of mod
ern novels unequalled Ivanhoe-home Of that
moro than hall. historic parsonage King Of the
Saxon greenwoods, Robin Hood, with oil his
northern merrymen, Seathelock, and Friar
Tuck, and Littlejohn, Allan.a-dale, wild for
est minstrel, and the blythe woodland queen,
Maid Marion - last leafy fortalice, wherein
throughout all England proper fingered the
sole remains Of Saxon hardihood and independ-
ence-red battlefield Of the unsparing conflicts
of the rival Roses.
There stand they STILL these proud, majestic
kings of by.gone ages; there stand they still,
the
"hallowed oaks,
Who, British born, the last of British race,
Hold their primeval rights by natures charter,
Not at the nod Of Caesar;
There stand they still, erect, earth. fast, and
massive graspiDg the green sward with their
gnarled and knotty roots, waving "their free
heads in the liberal air" full of dark, leafy UNI
bragg clothing their lower limbs, but far aloft
towering with bare stag horned, and splinter
ed branches toward the unchanged sky from
which SO many cenAires of sunshine had smiled
down, ofstempess frowned upon their secular
life Of ages"
There stand they STILL say alone or scat
tered here and there, or in dark, solemn groups
adjoining many noble park of modern days
or looming up in solemn melancholy upon some
"one-tree hill, throughout the fertile region
which lies along the line Of that great ancient
road, known in the Saxon days as Ermine
street bnt now. in common parlance, called
"the Dukeries' from seven contiguous domains
through which it sweeps, of England's long
lined noble.
Not now, as then, enveloping in its green
bosom sparse tracts of cultivated lands, with
few borough towns and a few feudal keeps, or
hierarch4l abbayes, but itself severed into di.
vers and fsr-distant parcels embosomed in
broad stretches of the deepest meadows, the'
most teeming pastures, or girdled on its SWELL
ing insulated knobs by the most fertile corn
lands, survives the ancient Sherwood.
Watered by the noblest and most beautiful
of northern rivers, the calm and meadowy
Trent the sweet sylvan Idle, the anglers ia
vorte fairy haunted Dove, the silver Eyre,
mountainous Wharle, and pastoral IRE and
Swale, if were called upon to name the very
garden gem of England, know none that COM
pare with this seat of the old-time Saxon forest.
You cannot now travel a mile through that
midland region of plenty and prosperity, with
out hearing the merry chime Of village bells
from many country spire, without passing the
happy doors of hundreds of low cottage homes,
hundreds of pleas ant hamlets counting the mel
low sunshine from some laughing knoll, or
nesting in the strawberries Of some orchard
mantled hollow.
Nor are. large, prosperous, and thriving
towns rich marts of agricultural produce, or
manufacturers of wealth richer than gold of
Eldorado, so far apart but that good pedes.
TRAN may travel through the streets of a half
q dozen in days journey and yet stand TWEEN
ty times agaze between their busy precincts in
admiration-to borrow the words Of the great
northern Romancer, with the scene and period
of whose most splendid effort my humble tale
unfortunately concides-in admiration of the
" hundreds of broad headed, short-stemmed,
wide-branched oaks which had witnessed per-
haTs, the stately march of the Roman soldiers"
TO BE CONTINUED.