Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey

the monarch, while at a distance loitered the foresters in green, and all the rural and hunting train that waited upon his sylvan sports.
    ‘A thousand vassals mustered round
With horse, and hawk, and horn, and hound;
And through the brake the rangers stalk,
And falc’ners hold the ready hawk;
And foresters in green-wood trim
Lead in the leash the greyhound grim.”
    Such was the phantasmagoria that presented itself for a moment to my imagination, peopling the silent place before me with empty shadows of the past. The reverie however was transient; king, courtier, and steel-clad warrior, and forester in green, with horn, and hawk, and hound, all faded again into oblivion, and I awoke to all that remained of this once stirring scene of human pomp and power—a mouldering oak, and a tradition.
    “We are such stuff as dreams are made of!”
    A ride of a few miles farther brought us at length among the venerable and classic shades of Sherwood, Here I was delighted to find myself in a genuine wild wood, of primitive and natural growth, so rarely to be met with in this thickly peopled and highly cultivated country. It reminded me of the aboriginal forests of my native land. I rode through natural alleys and green-wood groves, carpeted with grass and shaded by lofty and beautiful birches. What most interested me, however, was to behold around me the mighty trunks of veteran oaks, old monumental trees, the patriarchs of Sherwood Forest. They were shattered, hollow, and moss-grown, it is true, and their “leafy honors” were nearly departed; but like mouldering towers they were noble and picturesque in their decay, and gave evidence, even in their ruins, of their ancient grandeur.
    As I gazed about me upon these vestiges of once “Merrie Sherwood,” the picturings of my boyish fancy began to rise in my mind, and Robin Hood and his men to stand before me.
    “He clothed himself in scarlet then,
His men were all in green;
A finer show throughout the world
In no place could be seen.
    “Good lord! it was a gallant sight
To see them all In a row;
With every man a good broadsword
And eke a good yew bow.”
    The horn of Robin Hood again seemed to resound through the forest. I saw this sylvan chivalry, half huntsmen, half freebooters, trooping across the distant glades, or feasting and revelling beneath the trees; I was going on to embody in this way all the ballad scenes that had delighted me when a boy, when the distant sound of a wood-cutter’s axe roused me from my day-dream.
    The boding apprehensions which it awakened were too soon verified. I had not ridden much farther, when I came to an open space where the work of destruction was going on. Around me lay the prostrate trunks of venerable oaks, once the towering and magnificent lords of the forest, and a number of wood-cutters were hacking and hewing at another gigantic tree, just tottering to its fall.
    Alas! for old Sherwood Forest: it had fallen into the possession of a noble agriculturist; a modern utilitarian, who had no feeling for poetry or forest scenery. In a little while and this glorious woodland will be laid low; its green glades be turned into sheep-walks; its legendary bowers supplanted by turnip-fields; and “Merrie Sherwood” will exist but in ballad and tradition.
    “O for the poetical superstitions,” thought I, “of the olden time! that shed a sanctity over every grove; that gave to each tree its tutelar genius or nymph, and threatened disaster to all who should molest the hamadryads in their leafy abodes. Alas! for the sordid propensities of modern days, when everything is coined into gold, and this once holiday planet of ours is turned into a mere ‘working-day world.’”
    My cobweb fancies put to flight, and my feelings out of tune, I left the forest in a far different mood from that in which I had entered it, and rode silently along until, on reaching the summit of a gentle eminence, the chime of evening bells came on the breeze across the heath from a distant village.
    I paused to listen.
    “They are merely the evening bells of Mansfield,” said my companion.
    “Of Mansfield!” Here was another of the legendary names of this storied neighborhood, that called up early and pleasant associations. The famous old ballad of the King and the Miller of Mansfield came at once to mind, and the chime of the bells put me again in good humor.
    A little farther on, and we were again on the traces of Robin Hood. Here was Fountain Dale, where he