[Illustration: EARL OF SURREY.]

We scan what was once embraced in Windsor Forest, where the Norman
laid his broad palm on a space a hundred and twenty miles round, and,
like the lion in the fable of the hunting-party, informed his subjects
that that was his share. The domain dwindled, as did other royal
appurtenances. Yet in 1807 the circuit was as much as seventy-seven
miles. In 1789 it embraced sixty thousand acres. The process of
contraction has since been accelerated, and but little remains outside
of the Great and Little Parks. Several villages of little note stand
upon it. Of these Wokingham has the distinction of an ancient hostelry
yclept the Rose; and the celebrity of the Rose is a beautiful daughter
of the landlord of a century and a half ago. This lady missed her
proper fame by the blunder of a merry party of poets who one evening
encircled the mahogany of her papa. It was as "fast" a festivity as
such names as Gay and Swift could make it. Their combined efforts
resulted in the burlesque of _Molly Mog_. These two and some others
contributed each a verse in honor of the fair waiter. But they mistook
her name, and the crown fell upon the less charming brow of her
sister, whose cognomen was depraved from Mary into Molly. Wiclif's Oak
is pointed out as a corner of the old forest, a long way east of the
park. Under its still spreading branches that forerunner of Luther
is said to have preached. Messrs. Moody and Sankey should have sought
inspiration under its shade.

In the vast assemblage of the arboreal commonwealth that carpets the
landscape the centuries are represented one with another. It is a
leafy parliament that has never been dissolved or prorogued. One hoary
member is coeval with the Confessor. Another sheltered William Rufus,
tired from the chase. Under another gathered recruits bound with