CHAP. cm. 



SMACA^CEJE. Sa\IX. 



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 fvom Jig. 130+., 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 is 

 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 Nouveaic Du Hamcl: — 

 " 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 appaUing 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 is a 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 affcird 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 



1303 



Oehlberg (Mount of Olives), where the two trees are both planted, so as 

 to produce a very pleasing effect. 



Much has, of late years, been said respecting a weeping willow in the 

 Island of St. Helena, supposed to overhang the tomb of Napoleon. Accord- 



5 F 4 



