THE CUBBEER BURR. 203 
It was alive, and may have felt the earthquake, 
and beheld the darkened sun, when later on in 
time the Saviour bled and died upon the accursed 
tree. The far and wide proclamation of the 
Gospel; the rise and fall of empires, states, and 
kingdoms; the annihilation of nations, cities 
and armies; the rolling away of the clouds 
of ignorance, heathenism, and superstition; the 
era of the dawn of light upon our country, 
the memorable Reformation and its companion 
blessings, with all the long roll of events un- 
folded in the providence of God, down even to 
our own age, when the snorting sound of the 
locomotive and the rushing to and fro of the 
chariots, sweep in sharp vibrations through the 
aged boughs ;—all these, and more than we can 
tell beside, had a place in the life-time of this 
patriarch Yew-tree. Would that the Braburn 
Yew-tree had a tongue, and that, resting under 
its venerable branches, we could hear it unfold 
in order the mighty and momentous things that 
have taken place in the three thousand years of 
its existence ! 
But it is time well returned to our more 
immediate subject. The famous Banyan-tree 
