BY MRS. S. C. HALL.

The Company of Basket-makers (if there be such a company) have claimed a
large portion of the field--where the barons, "clad in complete steel,"
assembled to confer with King John upon the great charter of English
freedom, by which, Hume truly but coldly says, "very important
liabilities and privileges were either granted or secured to every order
of men in the kingdom; to the clergy, to the barons, and to the
people"--the Basket-makers, we say, have availed themselves of the low
land of Runnymead to cultivate osiers; piles and stacks of "withies" in
various stages of utility, for several hundred yards shut out the river
from the wayfarer, but as he proceeds they disappear, and Cooper's Hill
on the left, the rich flat of Runnymead, the Thames, and the groves of
time-honored Anckerwycke, on its opposite bank, form together a rich and
most interesting picture.

It is now nearly a hundred years since it was first proposed to erect a
triumphal column upon Runnymead; but we have sometimes a strange
antipathy to do what would seem avoidable; the monument to the memory of
Hampden is a sore proof of the niggardliness of liberals to the liberal;
but all monuments to such a man or to such a cause must appear poor; the
names "Hampden" and "Runnymead" suffice; the green and verdant mead,
encircled by the coronet of Cooper's Hill, reposing beneath the sun, and
shadowed by the passing cloud, is an object of reverence and beauty,
immortalized by the glorious liberty which the bold barons of England
forced from a spiritless tyrant.

Tho Cooper's Hill has no claim to the sublimity of mountain scenery, its
peculiar situation commands a broad expanse of country. It rises