distance, are, in spring-time, covered with blue-bells. This is Dulwich; yonder stands the college, founded by Alleyn, the player; he who had, no doubt, seen Shakspere many a time and who knows but what the great poet himself may have walked over these very fields, with Ben Jonson, and Burbage, and the founder of Dulwich College? There is a choice picture-gallery at the back of the building, containing a few first-rate pictures by the old masters. Look behind. What a noble avenue of elms! We never in any part of England beheld finer trees; it makes your neck ache to look up at them. Beautiful do their shadows appear thrown into that smooth sheet of water. It is the prettiest village in the neighbourhood of London, and endeared to us the more, because there are so many pleasant foot-paths fall around it, stretching in every direction across the fields. The road to the left would take us to the foot of Forest Hill; to the right, up Beggar's Hill, to Norwood; but we will keep on in a direct line until we reach a little swinggate, that leads into the wood, for there is a beautiful steep hilly path through that "silent land of trees." Here we are among oaks and birches, ash, maple, hazel, and entangling underwood; with gorse-bushes, yellow as gold; and patches of land, purpled over with heather; while the hiccory ever comes between, with its bunches of scarlet berries. True, we miss such gigantic trees as toss their knotted and weather-beaten arms over the moss-covered forest-paths of Sherwood; yet who would wish for a greener or more tranquil scene than we now stand in? Let us climb this little hill to the left; it stands in the very centre of the wood: a few years ago a rustic seat stood here: some Goth has removed it. I wish the fellow was tied to that oak, and kept there fasting until he agreed to replace it. Many

a time have we sat on that bench, looking at London in the distance; but the dry grass is no bad seat; and at the foot of this tree we can behold the bold outline of the greatest city in the world can see from far below Westminster Abbey, to where spire and pillar stretch away beyond the dome of St. Paul's, while the long range of Hampstead hills fills up the dark-purple background, as they seem to stand bearing on their heads the piled-up sky. What miles of distance does the eye here range over at a glance! How beautiful is the prospect! How still and tranquil is all around us here! No sounds but the songs of birds, the bleating of sheep, or the lowing of cows in the valley! What a contrast to yonder crowded streets; to that hum of voices, and thunder of a thousand wheels, which are at this moment shaking the heart of the city. What a relief to sit here amid the silence which reigns around us, and think of the bustle and tumult amid which, little more than an hour ago, we mingled. But our path is still onward. Look down this. hilly road, that goes winding through the wood; what a glorious picture! Now turn round here; we are on the Hog's-back, on the Surrey hills. That is Sydenham at our feet; the white spire beyond is Beckenham Church; that dark building to the left, miles away, is Eltham Palace; yonder summit, Shooter's Hill; the clump of trees in the far distance is near Sevenoaks. Here we have Kent and Surrey at one view; and this beautiful scene is but little more than five miles from London, to come the nearest way, which we have not done. We will turn to the right; a mile or so will bring us to Norwood, and after having had a glass of ale and a crust of bread and cheese at the Woodman, we will then strike down the hill to the left, and peep at the Annerly station. Who would

wish for a more beautiful road?

On our right stretch woods all the way, green and sloping, and ringing with the songs of birds; on our left, as sweet a pastoral landscape as eye need wish to dwell upon. The view from the upper windows of the Woodman is "beautiful exceedingly." London again, but with the country, for miles beyond Westminster Abbey, stretching on both sides of the Thames.

"To THE ANNERLEY STATION "-- is down this steep, hilly road; and when we have reached the base, we shall have woods on each side, over some portion of which we may wander, without committing trespass. Let us just peep into this sylvan solitude: there runs a rabbit! that was a pheasant which sprung up before us! what clusters of young nuts! so soft that you can crush them between the fingers. There 's woodbine for you! you might gather an armful in a little time. What a variety of beautiful flowers are spread at our feet! That is the cup-moss, how delicate and chaste in form! real fairy goblets!--what large bees!listen to that thrush!-here, I have found a blackbird's nest, with eggs in it; what a hard, round, solid house has the bird built! Let us leave it; should it escape the prying eyes of the little bird-nester, the woods will be enriched with two or three more songsters, by the time that another summer has thrown its green garment over the trees. Look at that board; why, this very woodland is to be let on building leases! Heaven only knows where unborn generations will have to go, in the course of time, to get out of London into the country! And yet, strange interposition of Providence! what we lose by distance, we make up for by the increased speed of travelling; for even here the railroad would land us, within half an hour's time from leaving London. But the very poor! those who cannot afford to

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pay for riding?-hundreds of such, we fear, will be doomed to live and die, in years to come, without ever seeing the pure and open country!

We almost shudder to think what England will be a century hence, with its rapidly increasing population, should the sweeping and unjust law of enclosure, which has been brought before Parliament, be put into operation! We consider it an iniquitous, unjust, and tyrannous measure; and would like to see the framers of it tried for treason against the rights and liberties of the English nation: it is the grossest insult that was ever offered to England; and in the days of the Commonwealth, the proposers of such an unEnglish scheme would have been committed to the Tower, by the unanimous voice of the nation. It is a downright, bare-faced, fourfold robbery. The dead are robbed of all they left behind to benefit the unneedy portion of the living. Gifts, charters, wills, the wide, ancient freeholds of the poor, are at once swept away, and there will be no shade of territorial possession left for them, but the grave. The living-poor are robbed of the only little land, which they felt they had a common share in; they will not have a spot of earth left that they can call their own; nowhere to turn a cow or a horse loose, to graze ;the rich will have all. Children unborn will be robbed of the common freehold, which, for centuries, had been handed down from sire to sire; the land which their forefathers had for ages held; and which had smoothed the bitter pangs of their parting hour, to think, that they left it free and unfettered to their children's children. And are the gifts of kings, and great, good-hearted men, who now moulder in their tombs, to be thus swept away at "one fell swoop?" What better claim have our nobility to their estates, than

the poor men have to their commons and waste lands? Let them pause before the dreadful day of reckoning is called! Last, and not least, it is robbing a whole nation of its health; a sapping and a mining of the whole constitution : for in years hence, the living will have nowhere to go for breathing room; two thousand now, will be ten thousand then; and in progress of time, twenty thousand!—and they are to have FOUR ACRES of land set apart for their health and recreation!

Was there ever before, in the whole annals of English history, such a daring, bare-faced, and downright attempt of robbery made upon the English nation? Ten acres is the maximum, for millions of inhabitants!—no more is to be allowed! that is to be all the breathing space given to the largest cities!-hardly room enough for them to walk clear of each other! In every three years the population increases above a million;-a pretty crowded country will ours be a century hence !-and those which are small towns now will be large ones then, and have only the four acres of unbricked space! It is dreadful to contemplate such a change as this measure proposes! There will be nothing but the dusty high-roads for the poor to walk upon; nay, perhaps, few of those, for the railways are branching everywhere. May the island in which I was born be submerged a thousand fathoms beneath the ocean, before its wild wastes, and breezy commons, and free forest glades are all enclosed, and its poor population imprisoned in a few limited acres! Rise, freemen of England! rise! and let not these robbers wrest the last freeholds from your hands!

Was Magna Charta passed for this? Why, it is worse than the old Forest Laws of the Normans! The conquered Saxon serf, if he left alone "vert and venison,” might