JANUARY. 59 



tempests of more than a thousand years. Ah ! it will 

 be missed by many who have sat within its solemn 

 shadow while the bells have chimed their " church- 

 going ' cadence on the sabbath morning, ere the 

 parish priest has presented himself to view ; or from a 

 distance been reminded by its solemn plumes of once- 

 loved friends resting in abandonment within its dark 

 dominion. In a wild state it is generally found grow- 

 ing solitary, although a dioecious tree, and in winter 

 and early spring its funereal boughs appear in moody 

 state very conspicuous amidst its deciduous brethren 

 in the forest. Sometimes the Tew is met with in 

 greater quantity than usual, as in the wood on the 

 basaltic hill of Areley, Staffordshire, where its sombre 

 branches overshadow a bubbling brook in many places 

 with a strangely gloomy effect. I also remember to 

 have seen many old grotesque individuals in the woods 

 that mantle about the base of the Wrekin, under one 

 of which I once spent a sadly meditative day and 

 yet in retrospection that day under the yew, tearful as 

 it then was, now seems full of delicious recollections. 

 Forgetful of the feelings of blighted hope that then 

 enthralled me, I now only seem to see the bright May 

 landscape that gleamed in its loveliness before me, 

 the distant Berwyn mountains above which many 

 mottled clouds curled in a sky of clearest blue, and 

 the fore-shortened Wrekin with its rocky crown seen 

 above its green shoulders, boldly rising before me, 

 while insect murmurs and the sounds of spring wan- 

 dered with soothing influence about my sylvan cell. 

 Many of the Welch and Monmouthshire church-yards 

 are black with a multiplicity of yew-trees, for instance 

 that of Mahmilade, between Abergavenny and Ponty- 



