THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 35 
WEEPING TREES. 
=| MONG the trees of this country there is nota really 
Hig, ugly one to be found. There are ugly trees, no doubt, 
but they are in miserable foreign countries, where the 
people breakfast on cold missionary, and eat salads 
~ Without oil, and do other dreadful things that degrade 
them below the possibility of appreciating the beauties of nature. 
Perhaps the most beautiful of all our trees are those in which there 
is more or less of a pendulous habit; and with the inerease of the 
pendulous habit there is increased refinement, and a departure from 
the picturesque to the gardenesque—these two “ esques ’ standing 
for nature and art respectively, and the relations of the eye and the 
mind to both. I shall not be singular in selecting the beech as my 
favourite of all the trees of Britain. To endeavour to establish 
pre-eminence for the oak is to miss the mark altogether, and betrays, 
not so much a want of judgment as a want of knowledge; for it 
ought to be understood, before we begin judging, that hardness of 
outline is incompatible with beauty, and the oak is therefore no 
competitor with the beech, however much it may win our admiration 
for its representation of the ideas of’strength, endurance, fixity, 
unchangeableness ; for the oak is an emblem of all these qualities, 
but its whole expression is that of power, while the expression of 
the beech is pre-eminently that of beauty, The silvery bark, the 
glossy leaves, the spreading, lofty growth, the infinity of” ares of all 
degrees of which its branching lines are made up, and the general 
tendency of the external growths to weep, or, as Gray better ex- 
presses it, to nod—these are characteristics which entitle it to be 
called the Queen of Forest Trees, as the oak has long ago been 
proclaimed the king. 
From “yonder nodding beech,” to the carefully-trained, tied- 
down, hard-pruned, umbrella-shaped weeping ash, what a transition ! 
It is of just the same kind as the transition from the falls of Lodore, 
that tumble and divide, and rush this way and that way—a wild 
accumulation of ellipses that change momentarily, yet are ever the 
same, to the prim spick-span fountain with two and thirty jets, and 
a prince’s feather, that adorns the terrace in Mr. Virtuogo’s garden, 
Some lovers of trees frown upon the umbrellas and shuttlecocks, 
but that is neither my business nor my taste. I do oftentimes wish 
people would not prune and train their weeping trees so hard and 
formal; but the most formal, if the growth is luxurious, and the 
form is well made out with furniture, are beautiful objects; and a 
few of them—three at most—may be allowed to come within the 
field of vision at one time, if one of the three is entirely different in 
style to the other two. 
For large work we want large trees, and for avenues and masses 
we have some very noble subjects among weeping trees. There is 
the weeping beech, Hugus sylvatica pendula, a tree of vast growth 
and bewitching form, yet quite a garden tree, because all its parts 
are refined. lts very leaves are objects of beauty, its bark, its 
pointed buds; it is beautiful all over, like virtue and innocence. 
February, 
