A poet's testimony to the sylvan beauties of Charnwood, in the seventeenth century, may not inappropriately be introduced here. The description acquires additional value for at least poetical accuracy, from the circumstance of the writer having been a visitor at Beaumanor and Garendon, and consequently thoroughly acquainted with the Forest.

"O CHARNWOOD, be thou called the choicest of thy kind:

The like, in any place, what flood hath hapt to find?

No tract in all this isle-the proudest let it be,

Can show a sylvan Nymph in beauty like to thee

The Satyrs and the Fauns, by Dian set to keep
Rough Hills and Forest Holts were sadly seen to weep,

When thy high-palmed harts-the sport of boors and hounds,
By gripple Borderers' hands were banished thy grounds.

The Dryads that were wont about thy lawns to rove,
To skip from wood to wood, and scud from grove to grove,
On SHARPLEY that were seen, and CADMAN's ancient rocks,
Against the rising sun to braid their silver locks,

And with the harmless elves on heathy BARDON'S height,
By Cynthia's golden beams to play them night by night;

Exiled their sweet abode, to common bare are fled―

They with the oaks that lived, now with the oaks are dead."

But notwithstanding this classical lament over the departure of the former glories of Charnwood, the same good old bard goes on to show that, in spite of all it had lost of its pristine loveliness, it was still his beau ideal of all a Forest ought to be.

"Who will describe to life a Forest, let him take
Thy surface to himself-nor shall he need to make
Another form at all, where oft in thee are found
Fine sharp but easy hills, which reverently are crown'd
With aged antique oaks, to which thy goats and sheep
(To him that stands remote) do softly seem to creep,
To gnaw the little shrubs on their steep sides that grow;
Upon whose other part, on some descending brow,

Huge stones are hanging out, as tho' they down would drop,

Where under-growing oaks on their old shoulders prop

The others' hoary heads; which still seem to decline.

And in a Dimble near* (even as a place divine

For contemplation fit), an ivy-ceiled bower,

As Nature had therein ordain'd some Sylvan power;

As men may very oft at great assemblies see,

Where many of most choice and wond'red beauties be-
For stature one does seem the bell away to bear,
Another for her shape to stand beyond compare;
Another short of these, yet for a modest grace
Before them all preferr'd.-

Amongst the rest yet one

Adjudg'd by all to be a perfect paragon:

* Probably the Hermitage, near Sharpley rocks.

C