FOREST OF ARDEN.

THE early writers describe Warwickshire as naturally divisible into two parts, the Teldon, or campaign, and the Arden, or woodland, a name given by the Celta to forests, however situated. The Avon formed the line which separated these tracts. Drayton asserts, with great probability of truth, that the Arden of Warwickshire was the most important of the forests of southern Britain. It extended from the banks of the Avon to the Trent on the north, and to the Severn on the west, being bounded on the east by an imaginary line drawn from Highcross to Barton. At the time the shire divisions of England were established, certain portions of this wild fell to the share of Worcestershire and Staffordshire, which counties bestowed on them those names which they still hold. The Warwickshire part has long been generally cleared of its thick and tangled woods, but in some spots an occasional air of wildness is found, as if a colouring of its ancient character remained, to afford some notion of what the complexion of the county was when occupied by the Cangi of the Cornavii, and their numerous herds. In Shakespeare's time, doubtless, the forest fragments were more entire and continuous, to have induced him to have selected it as the spot where some of his most interesting and beautiful scenes are acted.

SIR THOMAS DICK LAUder.

D

AS YOU LIKE IT.

ACT II. SCENE I.

The Forest of ARDEN.

DUKE, AMIENS, and Lords.

1 Lord. The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day, my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him, as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase: and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Duke S.

But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

1 Lord. O yes, into a thousand similes.

First, for his weeping into the needless stream;
'Poor deer,' quoth he, thou mak'st a testament

As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

To that which had too much.' Then being there alone, Left and abandon'd of his velvet friend;