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like giants petrified into writhing contortions, as under the sentence of some implacable fate.

Nor uninformed with phantasy and looks,
That threaten the profane

were these solemn figures, as they stood in their covert sanctuary. We looked at each other askant and incredulous. Never had we seen so heroic a brotherhood of trees. They will yet live for many years to give Burgate its only repute, if the term of their natural lives be assured to them. They are full of foliage, and of a great height.*

Our next excursion from Godalming was to the cedars of Lebanon at Peperharow Park. These notable trees stand in the private gardens, and not in the park, so that you seek Lord Midleton's permission to view them. The answer is most kindly courteous, and you are readily admitted. Here they are, all four within reach

of each other. Our lady excursionist-acutely observant as all lady naturalists are remarks that the foliage is not so luxuriant and handsome as that of cedars of less repute, and she is right. But the girth of the trees and the amount of timber they have sent out is astonishing. We learned that the four oldest were planted A.D. 1736. One of them is 15 feet in circumference at three feet from the ground, and some of the branches extend nearly 100 feet horizontally, sending out great flat lawns and floors of foliage. Surely the old monarchical form of the cedar to which these grand trees belong will ever find a place in the English landscape, despite the distinction and popularity of its Himalayan relative, the Deodar.

To the ancient yews at Hambledon Churchyard we made an afternoon's pilgrimage. These famous trees are two in number. The larger one measures nearly 28 feet in girth at five feet from the

* We measured the girth of several of these chestnuts approximately enough to endorse the dimensions given in the guide-book. Murray gives for two of the trees 19 feet 6 inches each at five feet from the ground.

Never was the value of the photographic camera more appreciated by us than in the presence of these and other Surrey trees. We tried in vain for portraits of them at the photographers' shops in Guildford.

ground. This venerable yew at Hambledon impressed us more than any single tree we had looked on, whether chestnut, beech, or cedar. Its trunk is vast and stately, but it is visibly hollow, though this you would hardly infer from the foliage that still shadows it. The place was fit for reflection, for the dead lie all around, and the well known lines of the Laureate, which might have been inspired by this venerable tree, were read by one of our company as we stood among the graves.

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So august a tree hallows the ground where it stands. It deserves a worthier neighbour than the building which has lately been raised on the site of the old church. The other tree is younger, and has a trunk of about 16 feet in circumference.*

Wild upland moors, purple with heather or barren with the flintiest of sand; "unharboured heaths, infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds;" lofty hills and ridges often as bare as when the ocean had just receded from their surface; wide panoramic views,

*Surrey is rich in gigantic and venerable churchyard yews. The largest in the county is at Crowhurst; this tree is 30 ft. 9in. in girth, and probably as old as its venerable brother at Crowhurst in Sussex (1,200 years, says Decandolle). There are also grand old yews in the churchyard at Tandridge, Harley, Burstow, Little Bookham, and Cobham. There are also remarkable clumps and groves of yews in Surrey. The Druid's Grove at Norbury consists of yews of the most remarkable anantiquity, and are distinguished by special names-"The Fallen Giant,"

"The King of the Park," "The Horse and his Rider." The yew trees at Newland's Corner, on the North Downs, east of Guildford, are one of the sights of this county.

A good contrast to the woods of beech and oak that fill up the valley below and cluster up the hill-sides, is afforded by the dark, level-branched yews, that rejoice in the chalky soil, and are everywhere prominent foreground objects. Towards Newland's Corner they unite in large masses, and are numerous enough to supply "trusty trees" for another Agincourt or Poictiers. Some of the yews in the wood a little N. of Newland's Corner are of immense size yet quite sound, others are decaying, but perhaps more picturesque.-Murray.

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from the great city on the sides of the north" to the sea where go the ships on the south; landscapes with an affluence of foliage which astonishes even Englishmen who come down from our northern counties-these are some of the charms which Surrey possesses. Whilst others have been ranging the Highlands, the Welsh mountains, and the Alps, we have found our annual holiday recreation in this inland, homely county. And yet we have given but a traveller's view of those natural beauties which lie on the surface of the landscapes of western Surrey. Of the flora and entomology of this land of heaths and varied soils we have yet said nothing. Nor have we told of those mysterious, subterranean, zoological worlds which lie just beneath the vegetable soil--which await you in the chalk pit, the stone quarry, or on the common highway. The animals and plants of many extinct and ancient worlds lie buried in unvarying historical order in the many geological formations which Surrey, as compared with Middlesex, possesses. There they lie-the memorials of former surfaces of the earth once as rich, and teeming, and diversified with life as the Surrey landscapes of this day.

Two more characteristics of Surrey, especially of the district of the Wey, we will add to our number. In this great sandy formation, about which so many of the landscape beauties of the country are found, are the springs, and fountains, and brooks to which we have already alluded. What life and variety do streams of water give to the scene; and how we have missed them in our Middlesex Saturday afternoon rambles! In the lofty sandhills of Surrey the waters stand as in a storehouse, and from their spongy bulk it filters out at their base a free and liberal gift to the dwellers around.

I see the rivers in their infant beds,

Deep, deep I hear them labouring to get free;

The crystal treasures of the liquid world

Through the stirred sands a bubbling passage burst,

And from the bottoms of the bosomed hills

In pure effusion flow.

At the town of Godalming, and at places less favourably situate, every house has its well,-not sunk, as in our Middlesex environs, through more than 200 feet of waterproof clay, but hollowed with a spade a few feet down in the porous soil, and supplied without charge

by Nature's unstinted hand. In the same formation of sandy earth is the ironstone of which we spoke. You see the iron tints staining the embankments, you pick up specimens of the ore in weighty angular fragments or in natural pipes. Farther south, in the villages of the Weald, are the vestiges of the iron furnaces of former days, and in the fireplaces of farmhouses you are still shown the product of local manufacture.* You learn that the iron balustrades of St. Paul's and Winchester Cathedrals are but some of the work of these Wealden forges, in times anterior to those of the coal-fields of the north.

The end of our holiday in Surrey approaches. The scenes we have witnessed may well alternate in our visions with those of Switzerland, Scotland, and Wales. It is our last day on the North Downs. We linger until it is towards evening-until

Air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat

With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing;
Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn.

A note-book richly stored with memoranda for future excursions, and a bag heavily freighted with the spoils of Nature in Surrey, are but part of the acquisitions with which we return to town. It is only when a friend greets us in London as an Esau returned from the wilds, and affects to smell the smell of our raiment "as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed" that we remember how well we look and how much better we are for our fortnight's holiday in Surrey.

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HE great peregrine army has now returned to its ordinary quarters. The season of sea-side visits and foreign tours is over. From scenes of the bold or grand picturesque in Great Britain or abroad, our tourist fellow-citizens have turned to the smooth and homely picturesque around London. Our annual tour is over also, and we settle down with them until another year comes round. But Nature is still with us. Our weekly inland rambles, though away from sea and mountain, shall still retain to us her companionship. The beauties of the deciduous landscape everywhere solicit us. The Autumn is giving a purple glory to many a heathery hill and plain around London, and mellowing the green foliage with russet and gold. Nature archæologic, and Nature glowing with colour and life, alike await to entertain us. In the fossil zoological worlds below us, as well as in the vivid beauty of Nature's latest landscapes, we may still refresh with a weekly ramble the life of the City to which we have returned.

This Saturday afternoon we devote to a further acquaintance with our forest trees. In the landscapes around London, especially in Autumn, we delight to admire our foresters, in their many-hued vestures of auburn and coppery-gold. We enjoy them as compo

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