rom forest to meadow
and plough, but the green road along the ridge remains what it was
before ever it felt a Roman wheel. No fresher air nor clearer sunlight
lies on any Surrey downs than on those broad aisles of shaven turf,
lichened whitethorns and wind-bent yews.

Newlands Corner has seen more than one battle. Mr. St. Loe Strachey,
editor of the _Spectator_, and one of the earliest founders of rifle
clubs in the country, has his home on the downs close by, and Newlands
Corner, the centre of the rifle clubs of Surrey, has been the scene of
assaults and the counter-attacks made by Volunteer cyclists against
defending bands of riflemen. The riflemen have held their own under the
severest fire; Ministers and distinguished soldiers have watched them.

On the downs by Newlands Corner, near the great trackway of the trading
Britons, stand some of the finest yews in England. To one of a group of
trees, a monarch whose descendants count their centuries in a ring about
him, belongs a noble poem. Mr. William Watson, under the shade of its
branches, wrote _The Father of the Forest_. These are the opening
lines:--

Old emperor Yew, fantastic sire,
Girt with thy guard of dotard kings,--
What ages hast thou seen retire
Into the dusk of alien things?
What mighty news hath stormed thy shade,
Of armies perished, realms unmade?

Already wast thou great and wise,
And solemn with exceeding eld,
On that proud morn when England's rays,
Wet with tempestuous joy, beheld
Round her rough coasts the thundering main
Strewn with the ruined dream of Spain.

Hardly thou count'st them long ago,
The warring faiths, the wavering land,
The sanguine sky's delirious glow,
And Cranmer's scorched, uplifted hand.
Wailed not the woods their task of shame,
Doomed to provide the insensate flame?

Mourned not the rumouring winds, when she,
The sweet queen of a tragic hour,
Crowned with her snow-white memory
The crimson legend of the Tower?
Or when a thousand witcheries lay
Felled with one stroke, at Fotheringay?

Ah, thou hast heard the iron tread
And clang of many an armoured age,
And well recall'st the famous dead,
Captains or counsellors brave or sage,
Kings that on kings their myriads hurled,
Ladies whose smile embroiled the world.

The pilgrims' road, as I have tried to show elsewhere, separates fro