Oh, how I love these solitudes
    And places silent as the night—­
  There where no thronging multitudes
    Disturb with noise their sweet delight! 
  Oh, how mine eyes are pleased to see
    Oaks that such spreading branches bear,
  Which, from old Time’s nativity,
    And th’ envy of so many years,
  Are still green, beautiful and fair
  As at the world’s first day they were!

Writing of the confines of the ancient forest of Sherwood, Mr. Howitt says of those sylvan delights:  “The great woods have fallen under the axe, and repeated enclosures have reduced the open forests, but at the Clipstone end still remains a remnant of its ancient woodlands, unrifled except of deer—­a specimen of what the whole once was, and a specimen of consummate beauty and interest.  The part called Bilhaghe is a forest of oaks, and is clothed with the most impressive aspect of age that can be presented to the eye in these kingdoms.  Stonehenge does not give you a feeling of greater eld, because it is not composed of a material so easily acted on by the elements.  But the hand of Time has been on these woods, and has stamped them with a most imposing character.  The tempests, lightnings, winds and wintry violence of a thousand years have flung their force on these trees, and there they stand, trunk after trunk, scathed, hollow, gray, gnarled, stretching out their bare, sturdy arms, or their mingled foliage and ruin, a life in death.  All is gray and old.  The ground is gray beneath, the trees are gray with clinging lichens—­the very heather and fern that spring beneath them have a character of the past.  If you turn aside and step amongst them, your feet sink in a depth of moss and dry vegetation that is the growth of ages, or rather that ages have not been able to destroy.  You stand and look round, and in the height of summer all is silent:  it is like the fragment of a world worn out and forsaken.  These were the trees under which King John pursued the red deer six hundred years ago, these were the oaks beneath which Robin Hood led up his bold band of outlaws....  Advance up this long avenue, which the noble owner of the forest tract has cut through it, and, looking right and left as you proceed, you will not be able long to refrain from turning into the tempting openings that present themselves.  Enter which you please, you cannot be wrong.  These winding tracks, just wide enough for a couple of people on horseback or in a pony phaeton, carpeted with a mossy turf which springs under your feet with a delicious elasticity, and closed in with shadowy trunks and flowery thickets—­are they not lovely?”