 | The works of Washington Irving |  |
FOREST TREES.
"A living gallery of aged trees."
One of the favourite themes of boasting
with the squire is the noble trees on his
estate, which, in truth, has some of the
finest that I have seen in England.
There is something august and solemn
in the great avenues of stately oaks that
gather their branches together high in
air, and seem to reduce the pedestrians
beneath them to mere pigmies. "An
avenue of oaks or elms," the squire observes,
"is the true colonnade that should
lead to a gentleman's house. As to stone
and marble, any one can rear them at
once, they are the work of the day; but
commend me to the colonnades that have
grown old and great with the family,
and tell by their grandeur how long the
family has endured."
The squire has great reverence for
certain venerable trees, gray with moss,
which he considers as the ancient nobility
of his domain. There is the ruin of an
enormous oak, which has been so much