The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1854-10-12


cambe bay and the treacherous sands Of Ian.
caster, had the Norman MOBILES as the entering
tide swept upward through the romantic glena
and ghylls of Netherdale and Wharfedale, past
the dim peaks of Pennigant and marlborough
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 tyrannic
forest laws of the Norman kings, which, wher.
ever their authority extended, bore not more
harshly on the Saxon serf than on the Norman
noble.
To return, however, toward the midland
counties and the rich regions with which this
brief survey of Northern England in the early
years Of the twelfth century oommenced-a
vast tract of country, including much of the
shire, and all the south of the West Riding OF
York, between the rivers Trent and Eyre, was
occupied almost exclusively by that mos beau.
tifnl 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-soene of the most magnificent of med
ern novels, unequalled Ivanhoe-home of that
more than half historic parsonage, King of the
Saxon greenwoods, Robin Hood, with all his
northern merrymen, Scathelock, and Friar
Tuck, and Listlejohn, Allan-a dale wild forest
minstrel aud the blythe woodland queen, Maid
Marion-last leafy fortalice, wherein, through
out ell England proper, fingered the sole re-
mains of Saxon hardihood and Independence
red battlefield of the unsparing conflicts of
the rival Roses
There stand they still, those proud, majestic
kings Of by-gone ages; there stand they still,
the
&c
Who, British born, the last of British race,
Hold their primeval rights by natures charter,
Not at tho nod of Caesar F"
There stand they still, erect, earth-fast, and
massive, grasping the green sward with their
gnarled and knotty roots, waving Gtheir free
heads in the liberal air,O 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 30 many centuries of sunshine have
smiled down, of tempest 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
on some "one-tree hill,D throughout the fertile
region which lies along the line of that great
ancient road, known in the Saxon days as Err
mine street, but now, In common parlance,
called "the Dukeries" from seven contiguous
domains, through which it sweeps, of England's
long Lined mobiles
Not now, as then, enveloping in its green
bosom sparse tracts Of cultivated lands with a
few borough towns, and few feudal keeps, or
hierarchal abbayes but itself severed into di-
vers aud far-distant parcels, embosomed in
broad stretches of the deepest meadows, the
most teeming pastures, or girdled on its swell
ing insulated knolls by the most fertile corn
lands, survives the ancient Sherwood.
Wasered by the noblest and most beautiful
OF northern rivers the calm and meadowy
Trent, the sweet sylvan Idle, the anglers favor
lite fairy Dove, the silver Eyre, noun
famous Wharfe and pastoral Ure and Swale,
If were called upon to name the very garden
gem of England, know none that compares
with this seat of the old. time Saxon forest
You cannot now travel 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 pleasant hsmlets counting
the mellow 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, OF
manufacturers of wealth richer than gold Of
Eldorado, 80 far apart but that good pedes-
trian may travel through the streets of half
dozen in days journey, and yet stand twen-
ty times agaEe 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 coincides-in admiration of the
hundreds of broad headed, short-stemmed,
wide branched oaks which had witnessed, per-
hsps, the stately march of the Roman soldiers
And here let none imagine these to be mere
exaggerations, sprung from the OVERLOOKING
brain of the Romancer-for, not fifty miles dis
tant from the scene described above there is
yet 10 be seen venerable patriarch of Sher-
wood, which boosted still, within few short
years. some garlsnds of surviving green-the
oak of Cowthorpe-probably the largest in the
island; which is to this day the boundary cor
ner of two marching properties, and has been
such since it was constituted so in Domesday
Book, wherein it is styled quercum tngentxm,
the gigantic oak.
Since the writing of those words eight GEN.
turtles have passed, and there are many rea-
sons for believing that those centuries have
added not An inch to its circumference, but
rather detracted from its vigor and its growth
and to me it seems far more probable that 1t
X
rife upon it, when the first Caesar plunged
waist-deep into the surges of the British Chan
pel from the first Roman PROV, than that it
should have sprung up, like the gourd of q
Jonah, in single night to endure thousand
years decay, without entirely perislling
In those days, however, a man might ride
from "eve 10 morn, from morn to dewy eve"
and hear no sound more human than the deep
"bellingu of the red deer, if it CHANGED to be
in the balmy month of June; the angry grunt
of the tusky boar, startled from bis mud bath,
in some black morass or, it may be, the tre-
mendous rush of the snow-white, black-maned
bull, crashing his way through shivered sap
lings and rent under-brush, mixed with the
hoarse> .cooings of the cushat dove, the rich
song gushes of the merle and mavis or the
laughing scream of the green woodpecker.
Happy, if in riding all day in the green ieafy
twilight which never, at high noon, admitted
one clear ray of daylight, and, long before the
sun was down, degencrated into murky gloom,
he saw no sights more fearful than the rabbits
glancing across the path, and disappearing In
the thickets; or the slim doe, daintily picking
her way among the heather, with her speckled
fawns gambolling around her. Thrice happy,
if as night was falling, cold and gray, the
hnkling of some lonely chapel bell might give
him note where some true anchorite would
| share his bed of fern and meal of pulse and
water, or jolly clerk of Copmanhurst would
breach the pipe of Malvoisie, bring pasties Of
the doe, to greet the belated wayfarer.
Such was the period, such the region, when
on glorious July morning, so early that the
sun had not yet risen high enough to throw
one sweeping yellow ray over the carpet Of
thick greensward between the long aisles of the
forest, or chequer it with one cool shadow
while the dew still hung in diamonds on every