Descriptive letterpress printed opposite this photograph:

THE WOODMAN’S DELL.

THERE can be no greater contrast than the entourage inclosing the workshop of the simple woodman, and that of the pale factory operative! The one breathes an atmosphere compounded of many things beside those intended by nature for the support of animal existence-is deafened by the discordant noise of untiring machinery, and at best feels himself but a unit in the vast sum of human life that forms the population of our crowded manufacturing cities. The other pursues his daily task in peaceful solitude alone with nature. The wild hyacinth, the pretty blue-bell, and many another forest flower grow under the trees, and fill the air with an indescribable sweetness, and the song of birds all day long accompanies his labours. The trees above him bend to the summer winds and flutter a drapery of green leaves to fan his brow-as though he were an Eastern monarch-and at the same time shelter him from the sun.

The life of the woods is all around him the rabbit hops furtively in and out of open warrens, and the young fledgelings from the deserted nest try their wings unheeded and unheeding. Under the greenwood tree the woodman’s lot is cast, and he learns to fear

“no enemy

But Winter, and rough weather.”

The seasons pass by in triumphal procession. When the stormy days are over,

Spring brings the wild flowers crowding back,⎯

“As a happy people come

When the war has rolled away.”

The trees⎯his constant companions put on their summer tresses, and later, Autumn again tints the woods with hues that are words. Thus, seasons pass, and generations of trees, and woodmen also, live their lives, flourish, and decay. The axe, or the winter storm brings their trunks to the woodman’s dell, and from them he rears his pile of logs, so suggestive of the cheerful blaze shed from the large Elizabethan fire places in the old mansion that stands at the bottom of the long avenue of limes.

The little dell, with its carpet of greensward, might have served in the Midsummer Night’s Dream for Bottom and Quince’s “Marvellous convenient place for a rehearsal

. . . A mile without the town by moonlight!”

Bottom. Are we all met?

Quince. Pat, pat: and here’s a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal. This green

plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our ‘tiring-house, and we will do it in action,

as we will do it before the Duke. . . . Come, sit down, every mother’s son, and rehearse

your parts. Pyramus, you begin. When you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake

-and so every one according to his cue.