T HEY are quite other from the big forests, from the
vast solitary deserts of umbrage peopled with mystery and peril. No doubt they exist in all European countries ; they are isolate survivals of the primeval forest, like tiny scattered pools left by the ebb-tide. In England, however, you meet them everywhere and always; they form part and parcel of that sweet intimacy with green things and growing things with which he so soon loses touch who wanders in the wilderness of London. I suppose copse is their generic title, which implies a small wood allowed to grow for cutting, perpetually predestined to axe and fire. But the axe is usually a long time coming ; and the copses have all manner of little local names, pet names, with reference to their actual position by hill or hollow. There are shay/ and spinney, hurst and holt, dene and dingle, linch and rue, and other terms ; which vary in every county, but invariably denote the same endearing qualities, comprehend- ing in one short word the narrow loveliness of the little woods.
As they lack the wild majesty of the great wood, so they are free from its secular terrors, from its grim potentialities of evil which so troubled our wayfaring forefathers. Robbers, witches, ogres, all the bites-noires of forests, would scorn the childlike precincts of the little wood ; but fairies might find room to dance there and leave a benison. They have no tales of heroism or chivalry; you shall not meet knight- errant or hardy outlaw riding down the April way. No blare of bugle sounds there, nor twang of bow ; no antlers jut between the hazels. Their fastnesses are but woven brambles at the best; their most intricate thickets present no labyrinths to the resolute. They are full of light., air, colour,
as they are empty of danger or horror; and when Tennyson alludes in " Maud " to "the dreadful hollow behind the little wood," you feel as if an aspersion of ill company had been cast upon your dearest friend. They offer a shelter fOr shepherds, a rendezvous for rustic courtship. In spring they are quick with children's voices; in summer the haymakers rest in their oak-shadow at noon; in autumn they are an open treasury of nuts and berries. Always they are a-flicker and a-flutter with birds, and their ramparts are alive with rabbits. Hedgehog below, squirrel above, an occasional weasel slinking through, a hare starting out of the herbage, a fox crossing cleared spaces deliberately : the fauna is as limited as its habitat. An American writer complains that the field-life of England brims over too obviously into its woods, flooding them with grass and fern. He avows the authentic wild-wood spirit to be absent,—that privacy of shade, that austere segregation of silvan sight and sound, which characterise the huge tree-tracts of the New World. But it is precisely this frank familiarity of innocence, this Arcadian hand-in- handness with pastoral doings, which is the charm of the little woods. They are like children playing at Red Indians; there is a miniature resemblance, a toy similitude to the real thing, but the elements of size and savagery are at once missing, and the note of crude reality is never even faintly heard. In place of the purr and roar of the giant woodlands, where on a windy day you hear the actual voices of the sea, wave after wave in ordered sequence, deep waters crescent and decrescent ; in place of the organ chant of innumerable pinewoods, swelling and thundering down Gothic aisles "for holy contemplation made,"—here are the lute and flute and dulcimer, the "tender stops of various quills,"—the chamber-music of Nature. The lark rises trilling from the furrow at the wood-edge; the willow-wren chuckles in the undergrowth. The ringdove croons among the leaves; and across the blackbird's regal phrases, like those of some Beethoven adagio, there strikes the glittering bravura of the nightingale.
But there are no two little woods alike. Every one holds in a corner of his soul the green remembrance of some spot specially beloved. This man recalls a Surrey coppice slanting to a brook, constellate with sweet wood- ruff and guarding hidden wealth of lily-of-the-valley. That one cherishes the thought of a Westmoreland wood-slope, where the white wild snowdrops glimmer and curtsy. Another dreams of an East Country thicket along the lake- side, fringed with sedgy grasses, and thrilled with strange cries of water-fowl. Another knows that some day he must inevitably return to an Isle of Wight covert, where, to walk at all, you must trample a thousand primroses as they carpet the broken clay-cliff to the very edge of the foam ; when three nightingales sing all night in May over the tall spires of butterfly-orchis standing like carven moonlight. Or to a Hampshire hanger, where, climbing at an angle of sixty degrees, clutching the horizontal branches, one can search out the hiding-place of rare and magical plants; or a small fir-wood on a hilltop, ringed with purple heather, where a tiny well drops, drops in the dark green silence; or a Southern dingle, threaded by a swift brown stream, whose banks are a-dance with daffodils. Even in the outskirts of brick and mortar the little woods will reach out friendly greeting, as any one will avouch who knows the Highgate bluebells.
Perhaps, all being said, the copses lie nearer to one's heart than any other country joy. They combine the freedom of the field with the colour and contour of massed foliage ; they are prodigal of exquisite flowers ; they are instinct with old loves and comradeships, and the echoes of forgotten years. Even in winter, when the wood-gate creaks on its rusty hinge, and the branch outlines are trellised against a miser- able sky, the little woods have welcome for you. For your regaling and entertainment they will proffer, beech-nuts buried under fallen leaves, where even the squirrel failed to find them ; clear streams of waters talking softly through the shadows. They will prepare you a screen of tangled withered sprays to shelter you briefly from the north wind ; and show you infinitesimal shoots of greenness, patiently mysterious• under the dead mosses till you come to unravel their meaning, —hieroglyphics of the secret of spring.
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