University of Virginia Library

FOREST 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 the air, and seem to reduce
the pedestrians between 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 battered by time and tempest,
that scarce any thing is left; though he says
Christy recollects when in his boyhood, it was
healthy and flourishing, until it was struck by
lightning. It is now a mere trunk, with one
twisted bough stretching up into the air, bearing
a green branch at the end of it. This sturdy
wreck is much valued by the Squire. He calls
it his standard bearer, and compares it to a veteran
warrior, beaten down in the battle, but bearing
up his banner to the last. He has actually
had a fence built round it, to protect it as much
as possible from farther injury.

It is with great difficulty that the Squire can
be brought to have any tree cut down on his estate.
To some he looks with reverence, as having

been planted by his ancestors; to others with
a kind of paternal affection, as having been
planted by himself; and he feels a degree of awe
in bringing down, with a few strokes of the axe,
what it has cost centuries to build up. I confess
I cannot but sympathize, in some degree,
with the good Squire on the subject.

Though brought up in a country overrun with
forests, where trees are apt to be considered
mere incumbrances, and to be laid low without
hesitation or remorse, yet I could never see a fine
tree hewn down without concern. The poets,
who are naturally lovers of trees, as they are of
every thing that is beautiful, have artfully awakened
great interest in their favour, by representing
them as the habitations of sylvan deities;
insomuch that every great tree had its tutelar
genius, or a nymph whose existence was limited
to its duration. Evelyn, in his Sylva, makes several
pleasing and fanciful allusions to this superstition.
“As the fall,” says he, “of a very
aged oak, giving a crack like thunder, has often
been heard at many miles distance; constrained

as I often am to fell them with reluctancy, I do
not at any time remember to have heard the
groans of those nymphs (grieving to be dispossessed
of their ancient habitations) without some
emotion and pity.” And again, in alluding to a
violent storm that had devastated the woodlands,
he says: “methinks I still hear, sure I am that I
still feel, the dismal groans of our forests; the
late dreadful hurricane having subverted so many
thousands of goodly oaks, prostrating the trees,
laying them in ghastly postures, like whole regiments
fallen in battle by the sword of the conqueror,
and crushing all that grew beneath them.
The public accounts,” he adds, “reckon no less
than three thousand brave oaks in one part only
of the forest of Dean blown down.”

I have paused more than once in the wilderness
of America, to contemplate the traces of
some blast of wind, which seemed to have rushed
down from the clouds, and ripped its way
through the bosom of the woodlands; rooting
up, shivering, and splintering the stoutest trees,
and leaving a long track of desolation.

There was something awful in the vast havoc
made among these gigantic plants; and in considering
their magnificent remains, so rudely
torn and mangled, and hurled down to perish
prematurely on their native soil, I was conscious
of a strong movement of the sympathy so feelingly
expressed by Evelyn. I recollect, also,
hearing a traveller of poetical temperament expressing
the kind of horror which he felt on beholding,
on the banks of the Missouri, an oak of
prodigious size, which had been in a manner
overpowered by an enormous wild grape vine.
The vine had clasped its huge folds round the
trunk, and from thence had wound about every
branch and twig, until the mighty tree had
withered in its embrace. It seemed like Laocoön
struggling ineffectually in the hideous coils
of the monster Python. It was the lion of trees
perishing in the embraces of a vegetable Boa.

I am fond of listening to the conversation of
English gentlemen on rural concerns, and of noticing
with what taste and discrimination, and
what strong unaffected interest, they will discuss

topics which in other countries are abandoned
to mere woodmen, or rustic cultivators. I
have heard a noble earl descant on park and forest
scenery with the science and feeling of a
painter. He dwelt on the shape and beauty of
particular trees on his estate, with as much pride
and technical precision as though he had been
discussing the merits of statues in his collection.
I found that he had even gone considerable
distances to examine trees which were celebrated
among rural amateurs; for it seems that
trees, like houses, have their established points
of excellence; and that there are some in England
which enjoy very extensive celebrity from
being perfect in their kind.

There is something nobly simple and pure in
such a taste. It argues, I think, a sweet and
generous nature, to have this strong relish for
the beauties of vegetation, and this friendship
for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest.
There is a grandeur of thought connected with
this part of rural economy. It is, if I may be
allowed the figure, the heroic line of husbandry.

It is worthy of liberal, and free born, and aspiring
men. He who plants an oak looks forward
to future ages, and plants for posterity.
Nothing can be less selfish than this. He cannot
expect to sit in its shade nor enjoy its shelter;
but he exults in the idea that the acorn
which he has buried in the earth shall grow up
into a lofty pile, and shall keep on flourishing,
and increasing, and benefiting mankind long after
he shall have ceased to tread his paternal
fields.

Indeed, it is the nature of such occupations
to lift the thought above mere worldliness. As
the leaves of trees are said to absorb all noxious
qualities of the air, and to breathe forth a purer
atmosphere, so it seems to me as if they drew
from us all sordid and angry passions, and
breathed forth peace and philanthropy. There
is a serene and settled majesty in woodland
scenery that enters into the soul, and dilates
and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations.
The ancient and hereditary groves, too,
that embower this island, are most of them full

of story. They are haunted by the recollections
of great spirits of past ages who have
sought for relaxation among them from the
tumult of arms or the toils of state, or have
wooed the muse beneath their shade.

Who can walk with soul unmoved among the
stately groves of Penshurst, where the gallant,
the amiable, the elegant Sir Philip Sidney passed
his boyhood; or can look without fondness
upon the tree that is said to have been planted
on his birth day; or can ramble among the
classic bowers of Hagley, treading in the footsteps
of a Pope and a Lyttleton; or can pause
among the solitudes of Windsor forest, and look
at the oaks around, huge, gray, and time-worn
like the old castle towers; and not feel as if he
were surrounded by so many monuments of long
enduring glory? It is when viewed in this
light, that planted groves, and stately avenues,
and cultivated parks, have an advantage over
the more luxuriant beauties of unassisted nature.
It is that they teem with moral associations, and
keep up the ever interesting story of human
existence.

It is becoming then for the high and generous
spirits of an ancient nation, to cherish these
sacred groves that surround their ancestral mansions,
and to perpetuate them to their descendants.
Brought up, as I have been, in republican
habits and principles, I can feel nothing of
the servile reverence for titled rank merely because
it is titled. But I trust I am neither
churl nor bigot in my creed. I do see and feel,
how hereditary distinction, when it falls to the
lot of a generous mind, may elevate that mind
into true nobility. It is one of the effects of
hereditary rank, when it falls thus happily, that
it multiplies the duties, and, as it were, extends
the existence of the possessor. He does not
feel himself a mere individual link in creation,
responsible only for his own brief term of being.
He carries back his existence in proud recollection,
and he extends it forward in honourable
anticipation. He lives with his ancestry, and
he lives with his posterity. To both does he
consider himself involved in deep responsibilities.
As he has received much from those that have

gone before, so he feels bound to transmit much
to those who are to come after him.

His domestic undertakings seem to imply a
longer existence than those of ordinary men;
none are so apt to build and plant for future centuries,
as noble spirited men who have received
their heritages from foregone ages.

I can easily imagine therefore the fondness
and pride with which I have noticed English
gentlemen, of generous temperaments, but high
aristocratic feelings, contemplating those magnificent
trees, which rise like towers and pyramids,
from the midst of their paternal lands.
There is an affinity between all natures, animate
and inanimate: the oak, in the pride and lustihood
of its growth, seems to me to take its
range with the lion and the eagle, and to assimilate
in the grandeur of its attributes to heroic
and intellectual man.

With its mighty pillar rising straight and direct
toward heaven; bearing up its leafy honours
from the impurities of earth, and supporting
them aloft in free air and glorious sun-shine,

it is an emblem of what a true nobleman
should be: a refuge for the weak—a shelter for
the oppressed—a defence for the defenceless;
warding off from them the peltings of the storm,
or the scorching rays of arbitrary power. He
who is this, is an ornament and a blessing to
his native land. He who is otherwise, abuses
his eminent advantages; abuses the grandeur
and prosperity which he has drawn from the
bosom of his country. Should tempests arise,
and he be laid prostrate by the storm, who
would mourn over his fall? Should he be borne
down by the oppressive hand of power, who
would murmur at his fate? “Why cumbereth
he the ground?”