CHAP. CIII. SALICA‘CER. SALIX. 1509 
gardens and villas of Canton, and other places in China. Fig. 1302., which 
is reduced from a drawing kindly lent us by Sir G. T. Staunton, shows 
part of the villa of Consequa, who had one of the finest gardens in Canton 
about the year 1812, when the drawing was taken. A large weeping willow 
is shown in the left of the picture, two or more in the middle, and one on 
the right, as if placed on a balcony; or perhaps growing through it from 
the conservatory below. The Chinese employ the weeping willow also in 
their cemeteries, as appears from fig. 1304., reduced from a plate in Dobell’s 
Travels, which represents the cemetery of the Vale of Tombs, near the lake 
See Hoo. All the prints of Chinese objects, indeed, concur in showing that 
the weeping willow is one of the most generally admired trees in China. It 1s 
common in gardens in the neighbourhood of Algiers, and in burial-grounds 
throughout Turkey, and great part of the west of Asia. In many countries, 
particularly in France and Germany, it appears to have taken the place of the 
cypress, as a tree for planting in cemeteries; and the reasons why it is pre- 
ferred for this purpose are thus given by Poiret in the Nouveau Du Hamel: — 
“« The cypress was long considered as the appropriate ornament of the ceme- 
tery; but its gloomy shade among the tombs, and its thick heavy foliage 
of the darkest green, inspire only depressing thoughts, and present death 
under its most appalling image. The weeping willow, on the contrary, 
rather conveys a picture of the grief felt for the loss of the departed, than 
of the darkness of the grave. Its light and elegant foliage flows like the 
dishevelled hair and graceful drapery of a sculptured mourner over a sepul- 
chral urn ; and conveys those soothing, though softly melancholy, reflections, 
which have made one of our poets exclaim, ‘ There isa pleasure even in grief.’” 
Notwithstanding the preference thus given to the willow, the shape of the 
cypress, conveying, to a fanciful mind, the idea of a flame pointing upwards, 
has been supposed to afford an emblem of the hope of immortality, and is 
still planted in many churchyards on the Continent, and alluded to in 
epitaphs under this light. In many of the churchyards of Germany, both 
emblems are combined; the Lombardy poplar being substituted for the 
cypress; as, indeed, we are informed it is in many of the cemeteries in 
Turkey and Persia. Fig. 1303. represents a churchyard in Baden, called the 
1305 
Oehlberg (Mount of Olives), where the two trees are both planted, so as 
to produce a very pleasing effect. 
uch has, of late years, been said respecting a weeping willow in the 
Island of St. Helena, supposed to overhang the tomb of Napoleon. Accord- 
oF 4 
