Later on he returns to the subject, and relates the story of Dolly most mournful, most tragic, full of tears and pity.
He now began to alternate his practical and his poetical papers. For the _Mark Lane Express_ he wrote on "Village Organization"; for the _Standard_ on "The Cost of Agricultural Labour"; for the _Fortnightly_ on the "Power of the Farmer." Between these papers he wrote on "Marlborough Forest," on "Village Churches," and on the "Average of Beauty."
The first of these three articles already reached almost the highest level of his better style. Even for those who have never wandered in this great and wonderful forest, the paper is wholly charming, while to those who know the place, it is full of memories and regrets that one has seen so little of all that this man saw.
"The great painter Autumn has just touched with the tip of his brush a branch of the beech-tree, here and there leaving an orange spot, and the green acorns are tinged with a faint yellow. The hedges, perfect mines of beauty, look almost red from a distance, so innumerable are the peggles. Let not the modern Goths destroy our hedges, so typical of an English landscape, so full of all that can delight the eye and please the mind. Spare them if only for the sake of the 'days when we went gipsying--a long time ago'--spare them for the children to gather the flowers of May and the blackberries of September. When the orange spot glows upon the beech, then the nuts are ripe, and the hawthorn-bushes are hung with festoons of the buff-coloured, heart-shaped leaves of a once-green creeper. That 'deepe and enclosed country of Northe Wiltes,' which old Clarendon, in his famous 'Civill Warre,' says the troops of King Charles had so much difficulty to hurry through, is pleasant to those who can linger by the wayside and the copse, and do not fear to hear the ordnance make the 'woods ring again,' though to this day a rusty old cannon-ball may sometimes be found under the dead brown leaves of Aldbourne Chase where the skirmish took place before 'Newbury Battle.' Perhaps it is because no such deadly outbursts of human passions have swept along beneath its trees that the 'Forest' is unsung by the poet, and unvisited by the artist. Yet its very name is poetical, Savernake, _i.e._, savernesacre--like the God's acre of Longfellow. Saverne--a peculiar species of sweet fern; acre--land. So we may call it Fern-land Forest, and with truth, for but one step beneath those beeches away from the path plunges us to our shoulders in an ocean of bracken. The yellow stalks, stout and strong as wood, make walking through the brake difficult, and the route pursued devious, till from the constant turning and twisting the way is lost. For this is no narrow copse, but a veritable forest in which it is easy to lose one's self; and the stranger who attempts to pass it away from the beaten track must possess some of the Indian instinct which sees signs and directions in the sun and wind, in the trees and humble plants of the ground. And this is its great charm. The heart has a yearning for the unknown, a longing to penetrate the deep shadow and the winding glade, where, as it seems, no human foot has been. High over head in the beech-tree the squirrel peeps down from behind a bough--his long bushy tail curled up over his back, and his bright eyes full of mischievous cunning. Listen, and you will hear the tap, tap of the woodpecker, and see, away he goes in undulating flight with a wild, unearthly chuckle, his green and gold plumage glancing in the sun, like the parrots of far-distant lands. He will alight in some open space upon an ant-hill, and lick up the red insects with his tongue. In the fir-tree, there, what a chattering and fluttering of gaily-painted wings--three or four jays are quarrelling noisily. These beautiful birds are slain by scores because of their hawk-like capacities for destruction of game, and because of the delicate colours of their feathers, which are used in fly-fishing. There darts across the glade a scared rabbit, straining each little limb for speed, almost rushing against us, a greater terror overcoming the less. In a moment there darts forth from the dried grass a fierce red-furred hunter, a very tiger to the rabbit tribe, with back slightly arched, bounding along, and sniffing the scent. Another, and another, still a fourth--a whole pack of stoats (elder brothers of the smaller weasels). In vain will the rabbit trust to his speed, these untiring wolves will overtake him. In vain will he turn and double, their unerring noses will find him out. In vain the tunnels of the 'bury,' they will come as surely under ground as above.