In fact, in crossing the Trent one seems to step back into old times;
and in the villages of Sherwood Forest we are in a black-letter region.
The moss-green cottages, the lowly mansions of gray stone, the Gothic
crosses at each end of the villages, and the tall Maypole in the
centre, transport us in imagination to foregone centuries; everything
has a quaint and antiquated air.
The tenantry on the Abbey estate partake of this primitive character.
Some of the families have rented farms there for nearly three hundred
years; and, notwithstanding that their mansions fell to decay, and
every thing about them partook of the general waste and misrule of the
Byron dynasty, yet nothing could uproot them from their native soil. I
am happy to say, that Colonel Wildman has taken these stanch loyal
families under his peculiar care. He has favored them in their rents,
repaired, or rather rebuilt their farm-houses, and has enabled families
that had almost sunk into the class of mere rustic laborers, once more
to hold up their heads among the yeomanry of the land.
I visited one of these renovated establishments that had but lately
been a mere ruin, and now was a substantial grange.
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