watching after, and pursuing her into her most hidden retirements. To him

High mountains were a feeling, but the hum

Of human cities torture

He had tried the life of London, but he could not bear it. His soul was robbed of its nourishment. He was shut up, blinded, famished in that huge wilderness of stone; dinned by that eternal chaos of confused sounds. He gasped for the free air; he pined for the dews; for the solemn roar of the ocean; for the glories of rising and setting suns. His father when he sent him from his country home at Cherryburn, to be apprenticed to Mr. Bielby at Newcastle, said to him at parting-" Now Thomas, thou art going to lead a different life to what thou hast led here: thou art going from constant fresh air and activity, to the closeness of a town and a sedentary occupation: thou must be up in a morning, and get a run." And Thomas followed faithfully, for it chimed exactly with his own bent, his father's injunction. Every morning, rain or shine, often without his hat, and his bushy head of black hair ruffling in the wind, he would be seen scampering up the street towards the country; and the opposite neighbours would cry"There goes Bielby's fond boy." These morning excursions he kept up during his life; and they did not suffice him. After the expiration of his apprenticeship, he roamed far and wide through the glorious and soul-embuing scenery of Scotland. Year after year, and day after day, it was his delight to stroll over heaths and moors, by sedgy pools and running waters. He saw bird, beast, and fish, from his hidden places, in all the freedom of their wild life. He saw the angler casting his line; the fowler setting his net and his springes; the farmer's boy amusing his solitude, when

He strolled, the lonely Crusoe of the fields

prowling after water-fowl amid the reedy haunts; watching the flight of birds with greedy eyes; lighting fires under the screening hedge, and collecting sticks for fuel, and blowing them on hands and knees into a flame. Such were his loves, his studies, his perpetual occupations; and to have similar results, we must have persons of a similar passion and pursuit. We must have

designers; for we have plenty of manual dexterity, capable of executing any design to the minutest shade, we must have designers in whom Nature is, at once, an appetite, a perpetual study, and quenchless delight. Landscape painters we have of this character. Turner, with his gorgeous creations; Copley Fielding, with his heaths and downs, in which miles of space are put upon a few feet of canvass, and that soul of solitude poured upon you in a gallery, which you before encountered only in the heart of living nature; Collins, with his exquisite sea-sides and rustic pieces; Hunt, with his really rustic characters; Barrett, with his sunsets; Stanfield, Cattermole, and others. We want a designer of wood-cuts of a similar character. What scenes of peerless beauty and infinite variety might an individual give us, who would devote himself, heart and soul, to this object; would ramble all through the varied and beautiful scenery of these glorious islands at successive intervals; who would pedestrianize in simple style; who would stroll along our wild shores; amongst our magnificent hills; prowl in fens and forests with fowlers and keepers; and seek refreshment by the fireside of the wayside inn; and take up his temporary abode in obscure and old-fashioned villages. Such a man might send into our metropolis, and thence, through the aid of the engravers, to every part of the kingdom, such snatches of natural loveliness, such portions of rural scenery and rural life, as should make themselves felt to be the genuine product of nature for nature will be felt, and kindle a purer taste and a stronger affection for the country.

who

I am not insensible to all the difficulties which lie in the way of such a devotion; nor that such a scheme will be pronounced chimerical by those who, at a far slighter cost, can please a less informed taste: but till we have such a man, we shall not have a second Bewick; and till such a mode of study is, more or less, adopted, we shall never have that love of the genuine country gratified, which assuredly and extensively exists.

Since writing the foregoing remarks, it is with great pleasure that I have seen the arts of designing and wood-engraving beginning to separate themselves, and that of designing for the woodengravers taking its place as a distinct profession.* Harvey,

* The London and Westminster Review, August, 1838, in an article on wood

Browne, Sargent, Lambert, Gilbert, and Melville, have for some time been designers of this description. This important step has only to be followed up by designers in the manner pointed out in this chapter, to insure that complete return to nature which is so much to be desired, and where such an exhaustless field of beauty and life awaits the observant artist, as would place the present pre-eminent manual skill of our wood-engravers in its true and well-merited position.

engraving, very judiciously suggested that it was an art well calculated for the pursuit of ladies, and one which they might convert not only into a source of profit to themselves, but of public advantage. No doubt of it. It is an art simple and of easy acquisition. But why not ladies who are good sketchers become designers for wood-cuts at once? They have all the requisite qualifications already in their hands; and what fresh and original treasures of taste and fancy are now slumbering, lost to the world, which they might embellish, in the minds and portfolios of ladies. So vastly is the demand for wood-engravings every day growing, that nothing is more difficult than to obtain designs, or when obtained to get them cut. Ladies, therefore, who have a genius for design, would soon find their value amongst the publishers; and while the profession of a designer is both elegant and feminine, how much more independent, and much less laborious, it would be than needlework, or the duties and position of a governess.

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PART V.

CHAPTER I.

THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND.

AMONGST the most interesting features of the country are our forests. There is nothing that we come in contact with, which conveys to our minds such vivid impressions of the progression of England in power and population; which presents such startling contrasts between the present and the past. We look back into the England which an old forest brings to our mind, and see a country one wild expanse of woodlands, heaths, and mosses. Here and there a little simple town sending up

Its fleecy smoke amongst the forest boughs.
From age to age no tumult did arouse

Its peaceful dwellers; there they lived and died,
Passing a dreamy life, diversified

By nought of novelty, save, now and then,

A horn, resounding through the neighbouring glen,
Woke them as from a trance, and led them out
To catch a brief glimpse of the hunt's wild route;
The music of the hounds; the tramp and rush
Of steeds and men ;-and then a sudden hush
Left round the eager listeners;—the deep mood
Of awful, dead, and twilight solitude,
Fallen again upon that forest vast.

We see in the distance the stately castle of the feudal lord; we hear the bell of the convent from the neighbouring dale. There are solitary hamlets and scattered cottages, with mud walls and thatched roofs, peeping from the ocean of umbrageous tree-tops,

and little patches of cultivation. Born thralls are tilling the lands of the thane, or watching his flocks and herds, to defend them from the wolves and bears; foresters are going their rounds beneath hoary oaks, on the watch for trespassers on venison and vert. We meet with the pilgrim with his scallop shell, and sandal shoon; we come suddenly on the solitude of the hermit, where some spring bubbles from the forest turf, or scatters its waters down the fernhung rocks. Perhaps the noble and his train sweep past in pursuit of the stag or boar; perhaps the outlaw and his train in the same pursuit, and setting at defiance, amid vast woods and tracks familiar to himself, all the keen officers, and bloody statutes of forest law.

It is a pleasure but to hear

The bridles ringing sharp and clear

Amid the forest green;

To hear the rattle of the sheaves,
And coursers rustling in the leaves,
With merry blasts between.

Stewart Rose's Red King.

Perhaps there is the sound of martial alarm-the clash of sudden onset in the forest glade. The dwellings of the vassals surrounding the lord's castle are in flames, fired by the band of some hostile noble. Such is the England into which an old forest carries our imagination;-partially peopled with feudal barons and unlettered serfs; without commerce abroad; without union within; brave, yet demi-savage; aspiring, but violent; pious, yet sanguinary in all its penal enactments. When we step out of memory and imagination into the cheerful daylight and conscious present, what an England now! All those forests, with three or four exceptions, are gone!—their names alone left in the land by the powerful impressions of time and custom. One wide expanse of cultivation;-the garden of the world;—swarming towns, splendid cities, busy and populous hamlets appearing everywhere, and fenced fields interscattered with patrician dwellings; not crowned with towers, lit by mere loop-holes, defended with bastioned gateways, portcullises, and drawbridges, and moats; but standing with open aspects of peaceful beauty, amid fair gardens and fair lawns, undefended by feudal ramparts, because a thousand times more strongly fortified by the security of enlightened laws. We see a swarming people,