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if they might vegetate. "Perhaps," said he, "these may produce something that we have not yet in England." He tried a cutting, and it succeeded. The tree was removed by some person as barbarous as the reverend gentleman who cut down Shakespeare's Mulberry Tree. The Willow was destroyed for the same reason, as the Mulberry Tree-because the owner was annoyed at persons asking to see it. The Weeping Willow That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,*

has had its interest with people in general much increased by its association with the history of Napoleon in the Island of St. Helena. The tree whose boughs seemed to hang so fondly over his remains has now its scions in all parts of the world. Few travellers visited the tomb without taking a small cutting of the Napoleon Willow for cultivation in their own land. Slips of the Willow at Twickenham, like those of the Willow at St. Helena, have also found their way into many countries. In 1789 the Empress of Russia had some of them planted in her garden at St. Petersburgh.

Mr. Loudon tells us that there is an old oak in Binfield Wood, Windsor Forest, which is called Pope's Oak, and which bears the inscription "HERE POPE SANG:"+ but according to general tradition it was a beech tree, under which Pope wrote his "Windsor Forest." It is said that as that tree was decayed, Lady Gower had the inscription alluded to carved upon another tree near it. Perhaps the substituted tree was an oak.

I

may here mention that in the Vale of Avoca there is a tree celebrated as that under which Thomas Moore wrote the verses entitled "The meeting of the Waters."

The allusion to Pope's Oak reminds me that Chaucer is said to have planted three oak trees in Donnington Park near Newbury. Not one of them is now, I believe, in existence. There is an oak tree in Windsor Forest above 1000 years old. In the hollow of this tree twenty people might be accommodated with standing

* The leaves of the willow, though green above, are hoar below. Shakespeare's knowledge of the fact is alluded to by Hazlitt as one of the numberless evidences of the poet's minute observation of external nature.

See Mr. Loudon's most interesting and valuable work entitled Arboretum et Fruticetum Britanicum.

room.

It is called King's Oak: it was William the Conqueror's favorite tree. Herne's Oak, in Windsor Park, is said by some to be still standing, but it is described as a mere anatomy.

An old oak whose boughs are mossed with age,

And high top bald with dry antiquity.

As You Like it.

"It stretches out its bare and sapless branches," says Mr. Jesse, "like the skeleton arms of some enormous giant, and is almost fearful in its decay." Herne's Oak, as every one knows, is immortalised by Shakespeare, who has spread its fame over many lands.

There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns,
And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle;
And makes milch cows yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.

You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know,
The superstitious, idle-headed eld

Received, and did deliver to our age,

This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.

Merry Wives of Windsor.

"Herne, the hunter" is said to have hung himself upon one of the branches of this tree, and even,

Yet there want not many that do fear,

In deep of night to walk by this Herne's Oak.

Merry Wives of Windsor.

It was not long ago visited by the King of Prussia to whom Shakespeare had rendered it an object of great interest.

It is unpleasant to add that there is considerable doubt and dispute as to its identity. Charles Knight and a Quarterly Reviewer both maintain that Herne's Oak was cut down with a number of other old trees in obedience to an order from George the Third when he was not in his right mind, and that his Majesty deeply regretted the order he had given when he found that the most interesting tree in his Park had been destroyed. Mr. Jesse, in his Gleanings in Natural History, says that after some pains to ascertain the truth he is convinced that this story is not correct, and that the famous old tree is still

standing. He adds that George the Fourth often alluded to the story and said that though one of the trees cut down was supposed to have been Herne's Oak, it was not so in reality. George the Third, it is said, once called the attention of Mr. Ingalt, the manager of Windsor Home Park to a particular tree, and said "I brought you here to point out this tree to you. I commit it to your especial charge; and take care that no damage is ever done to it. I had rather that every tree in the park should be cut down than that this tree should be hurt. This is Herne's Oak.”

Sir Philip Sidney's Oak at Penshurst mentioned by Ben Jonson

That taller tree, of which the nut was set
At his great birth, where all the Muses met-

is still in existence.

also alludes to

It is thirty feet in circumference. Waller

Yonder tree which stands the sacred mark

Of noble Sidney's birth.

Yardley Oak, immortalized by Cowper, is now in a state of decay.

Time made thee what thou wert-king of the woods!

And time hath made thee what thou art-a cave

For owls to roost in.

Cowper.

The tree is said to be at least fifteen hundred years old. It cannot hold its present place much longer; but for many centuries to come it will

Live in description and look green in song.

It stands on the grounds of the Marquis of Northampton ;. and to prevent people from cutting off and carrying away pieces of it as relics, the following notice has been painted on a board and nailed to the tree :- "Out of respect to the memory of the poet Cowper, the Marquis of Northampton is particularly desirous of preserving this Oak.”

Lord Byron, in early life, planted an oak in the garden at Newstead and indulged the fancy, that as that flourished so should he. The oak has survived the poet, but it will not outlive the memory of its planter or even the boyish verses which he addressed to it.

Pope observes, that " a tree is a nobler object than a prince in his coronation robes." Yet probably the poet had never seen any tree larger than a British oak. What would he have thought of the Baobab tree in Abyssinia, which measures from 80 to 120 feet in girth, and sometimes reaches the age of five thousand years. We have no such sylvan patriarch in Europe. The oldest British tree I have heard of, is a yew tree of Fortingall in Scotland, of which the age is said to be two thousand five hundred years. If trees had long memories and could converse with man, what interesting chapters these survivors of centuries might add to the history of the world!

Pope was not always happy in his Twickenham Paradise. His rural delights were interrupted for a time by an unrequited passion for the beautiful and highly-gifted but eccentric Lady Mary Wortley Montague.

Ah! friend, 'tis true-this truth you lovers know;

In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow;

In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes
Of hanging mountains and of sloping greens;
Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies,
And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes.

What are the gay parterre, the chequered shade,
The morning bower, the evening colonnade,
But soft recesses of uneasy minds,

To sigh unheard in to the passing winds?

So the struck deer, in some sequestered part,
Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart;
He, stretched unseen, in coverts hid from day,
Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away.

These are exquisite lines, and have given delight to innumerable readers, but they gave no delight to Lady Mary. In writing to her sister, the Countess of Mar, then at Paris, she says in allusion to these "most musical, most melancholy" verses- -"I stifled them here; and I beg they may die the same death at Paris." It is not, however, quite so easy a thing as Lady Mary seemed to think, to "stifle" such poetry as Pope's.

Pope's notions respecting the laying out of gardens are well expressed in the following extract from the fourth Epistle of

his Moral Essays.* * This fourth Epistle was addressed, as most readers will remember, to the accomplished Lord Burlington, who, as Walpole says, "had every quality of a genius and an artist, except envy. Though his own designs were more chaste and classic than Kent's, he entertained him in his house till his death, and was more studious to extend his friend's fame than his own."

Something there is more needful than expense,

And something previous e'en to taste-'tis sense;
Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,
And though no science fairly worth the seven ;
A light, which in yourself you must perceive;
Jones and Le Nôtre have it not to give.
To build, or plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the column or the arch to bend ;
To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot;
In all let Nature never be forgot.
But treat the goddess like a modest fair,
Nor over dress nor leave her wholly bare;
Let not each beauty every where be spied,
Where half the skill is decently to hide.
He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,
Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds.
Consult the genius of the place in all ;+

That tells the waters or to rise or fall;

Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale,

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* All the rules of gardening are reducible to three heads: the contrasts, the management of surprises and the concealment of the bounds. "Pray, what is it you mean by the contrasts?" "The disposition of the lights and shades."-" "Tis the colouring then?"-"Just that."-Should not variety be one of the rules?"-" Certainly, one of the chief; but that is included mostly in the contrasts. I have expressed them all in two verses(a) (after my manner, in very little compass), which are in imitation of Horace's-Omne tulit punctum. Pope.-Spence's Anecdotes.

In laying out a garden, the chief thing to be considered is the genius of the place. Thus at Tiskins, for example, Lord Bathurst should have raised two or three mounts, because his situation is all plain, and nothing can please without variety. Pope-Spence's Anecdotes.

(a) He gains all points who pleasingly confounds,
Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds.

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