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THE GREAT PARK.

THE changes which take place in the mere face of a country subjected to rapid improvements, even during the short period between the boyhood and the mature of an individual, were never more strikingly exemplified than in that beautiful district into which we are about to conduct our readers. In the year 1813 an Act of Parliament was passed for the Inclosure of Windsor Forest. This was perhaps one of the largest inclosures that was ever effected under the power of one Act. There is a survey of this forest by Norden, taken in 1607, which makes its circuit seventy-seven miles and a half. This great extent was somewhat diminished in later years; for in a subsequent map by Rocque the circuit is given as fifty-six miles. At the time of the inclosure it comprised the whole of eleven parishes, and parts of six other parishes. The portion which was previously inclosed, and known as Windsor Great Park, was of small extent compared with the whole range of the Forest. The area of the Park was less than four thousand acres, of which two thousand acres were under cultivation; while the open, uninclosed Forest amounted to twenty-four thousand acres. With a few exceptions, such as part of the irreclaimable tract of Bagshot Heath, the whole face of this country is now utterly changed.

It appears to us that, until a comparatively modern period, the proud keep of Windsor stood in solitary magnificence, with this vast extent of hunting-ground lying for miles before it, extending from the south bank of the Thames. There were then no distinctions of park or forest. The great oaks grew up to the Castle walls, and stretched away till they reached the sandy deserts of Surrey, and the chalk hills beyond the Kennet. But we must not consider that Windsor Forest, even three or four centuries ago, was nothing but heath and woodland. In all such districts, in spite of feudal domination, whether of king or noble, man has asserted his claim that the earth should yield him sustenance : the more fertile spots have been inclosed; solitary farms have grown into villages, and villages into towns. This was the character of the Windsor Forest which Pope described :

"Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water seem to strive again;
Not, chaos-like, together crush'd and bruised,
But, as the world, harmoniously confused;
Where order in variety we see,

And where, though all things differ, all agree.
Here waving groves a chequer'd scene display,
And part admit and part exclude the day;
As some coy nymph her lover's warm address
Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress.
There, interspersed in lawns and open glades,
Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades,
Here in full light the russet plains extend;
There, wrapt in clouds, the bluish hills ascend.

VOL. II.

E'en the wild heath displays her purple dyes,

And 'midst the desert fruitful fields arise,
That, crown'd with tufted trees and springing corn,
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn."

The poet of Windsor Forest goes on to describe the condition of this district under the Norman kings. There is no great precision in his descriptions; for they are founded upon the traditions of the depopulation of large tracts by the Conqueror for the formation of the New Forest :

"Not thus the land appear'd in ages past,
A dreary desert, and a gloomy waste,
To savage beasts and savage laws a prey,
And kings more furious and severe than they;
Who claim'd the skies, dispeopled air and floods,
The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods.

The fields are ravish'd from th' industrious swains,
From men their cities, and from gods their fanes :
The levell'd towns with weeds lie cover'd o'er;
The hollow winds through naked temples roar;
Round broken columns clasping ivy twined;
O'er heaps of ruin stalk'd the stately hind;
The fox, obscene, to gaping tombs retires,
And savage howlings fill the sacred quires."
This, whether applied to the New Forest or to Windsor
Forest, is, to a certain extent, poetical exaggeration.
The New Forest was an ancient woody tract, known as
Ytene, long before the time of the Conqueror; and so
was Windsor Forest, which was the property of Queen

Emma, the mother of Edward the Confessor. In both

cases we have no doubt that the severity of the Forest laws introduced by the Norman kings produced a considerable depopulation, and very general suffering. Voltaire, who has ridiculed the notion of the New Forest being depopulated, seems to consider that the process of forest-making was that of planting new timber over waste districts. The process was probably Trees were cut down to make exactly the reverse. homestead stood in the way, their little patches of chases; and if the hind's cottage or the yeoman's cultivation were necessarily sacrificed to the all-absorbing passion of the Norman hunters.

Froissart has a slight notice of the Forest of Windsor in the time of Edward the Third. After the Battle of Poictiers, the captive king of France was brought to England. "Anon after, the French king was removed from the Savoy to the Castle of Windsor, and all his household, and went a hunting and a hawking thereabout at his pleasure, and the lord Philip, his son, with him and all the other prisoners abode still at London, and went to see the king at their pleasure, and were received all only on their faiths." In a well-known poem of Lord Surrey, one of the last victims of Henry the Eighth, he describes his early residence at Windsor "in lust and joy," and looks back with fond recollection upon "the large green courts," "the meads,"

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