Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/547

 . 7, 1863.]  not a word about any dangers of the town, or anything of the sort;—seemed quite unconscious of the existence of any such dangers. On the contrary, he spoke of his hopes that the amusements of the city, which were natural and proper for her age, would make her forget the regret which it was natural she would feel at first leaving her home of so many years;—spoke of the indulgence of la Signora Dossi;—she was an old woman now, but had been young herself; and would understand that a girl, such as Giulia, was not to be expected to lead the life of a woman of sixty. He had no doubt that she would find friends at Fano. Girls such as Giulia—(a priest’s smile here, half fatherly, half gallant)—rarely failed to find them! Let her cultivate any such—prudently and innocently of course; but by no means let her imagine that it was her duty to shut herself up like a nun.

And therewith the priest kindly dismissed her, telling her that she would find la padrona sitting up for her; and that she must make haste to go to bed, as she was to start before daybreak the next morning with Signor Paolo.

Giulia understood it all; and smiled to herself, somewhat bitterly, as she thought how much trouble they were all taking to secure the object, which was her own as much as theirs.

sings Barbauld of the spring, yet to me the Autumn is by far the most delightful season, with its gay robed forests, its teeming orchards, and waving corn. Nature is silent in autumn, but not so man; every wood and field echoes with life; from the note of cheery horn, coming with the breaking day, and reminding one that the hunting season is nigh at hand, to the swelling harvest strain that rises more energetically than harmoniously from the valley beneath us—all these fill the air, and make us almost forget that the birds are silent.

Early autumn is the best time of the year to visit our great woodland districts, and this autumn found me in the heart of the New Forest, among whose glades she has been keeping holiday in right royal panoply. I had visited the same spot once before, and longed to con over again the bright lesson taught me by a voice now silent.

I have always pitied those (and their name is legion) who hurry away to seek out beauties of scenery in distant lands, oblivious or ignorant of the gems that lie in their own fair country. England will well bear comparison with any land, especially in woodland scenery, and in my opinion there is no better example to be found than in that district of Hampshire called the New Forest. Tennyson knows this, and no doubt our gratitude is due to the inspiration there gained for some of those immortal word-paintings that ring and glow with the very voice and presence of Nature thrilling the spirit strings, like the old familiar notes that have mingled in every scene of love, joy, or grief.

No part of England contains a greater diversity of landscape than the New Forest. The undulating surface, covered in some parts by spreading woods, in others by heath, or patches of cultivation, with deep ravines, rocky heights, streams, and beyond all the blue sea. Yet perhaps the great charm lies in the natural wood, and the consciousness that we are gazing at Nature’s own handiwork; this knowledge, to a mind trained from childhood in artificial life, lends a new interest and awakens a new enthusiasm,—the same which dazzles and delights us in the great tropical forests.

The stately trees take every form of beauty and foliage, and, now in their autumn garb, are of every hue and tint. The everlasting green of the holly forms a dense under-growth, contrasting with the gay colours, and making some of the paler robed trees stand out as if they were endowed with the power of motion. The purple of the heathlands has given place to a soft sober grey, round which the gay woods stand like serried ranks of plumed and caparisoned warriors.

Yet lovely as the Forest is, when seen from the hill-top or open plain, it is even more so when, wandering beneath the arching boughs, you gain the deeper shadows where, here and there only, a ray of sunlight darts across like a golden spear, or lies flickering upon the mossy ground. Here, too, you will find the brooks that vein the forest, and exceedingly lovely they are; stealing upon you from behind some dark thicket, rippling along, their bright waters tinged with iron, and gilding the edges of the mossy stones until they resemble gems in a setting of gold, in other places, throwing a fretwork of the same bright tint over the pendent ferns and grasses, and again in others, gathering a deep amber-colour as it lies under some spreading myrtle.

I never saw the power and beauty of reflection more vividly pourtrayed than upon the bosom of these silent pools in the Forest brooks; every leaf and spray is reproduced, intensified, and enriched by the transparency of the water, suffering the warm hue of the mineral sediment in its bed to shine up through all, making, in their frames of gnarled root, fern, and moss, a matchless picture and study for the painter.

I made Stoneycross my head-quarters for the first week, wandering day after day into the Forest, seldom meeting any one, save a woodman, except near the site of what is called Rufus’ stone, the memorial which marks the spot tradition assigns as the death-scene of William—a death poetically denounced as a just retribution for the sin of afforesting the hitherto fertile district, a fertility which I fancy existed in the imagination of the writers who found it a fair field to draw from; and coming generations will bless, rather than blame, the love of sport that has left them such memorial of the past as the New Forest.