THE WEEPING WILLOW. 



IN the early part of my life, one of my favorite resorts 

 during my rambles was a green lane bordered by a 

 rude stone wall, leading through a vista of overarching 

 trees, and redolent always with the peculiar odors of the 

 season. At the termination of this rustic by-road, a 

 fit approach to the dwelling of the wood-nymphs, there 

 was a gentle rising ground, forming a small tract of table- 

 land, on which a venerable Weeping Willow stood, a 

 solitary tree overlooking a growth of humble shrubs, 

 once the tenants of an ancient garden. The sight of this 

 tree always affected me with sadness mingled with a 

 sensation of grandeur. T^his old solitary standard, with a 

 few rose-bushes and lilacs beneath its umbrage, was all 

 that remained on the premises of an old mansion-house 

 which had long ago disappeared from its enclosure. Thus 

 the Weeping Willow became associated in my memory, 

 not with the graveyard or the pleasure-ground, but with 

 these domestic ruins, the sites of old homesteads whose 

 grounds had partially reverted to their primitive state of 

 wildness. 



Of all the drooping trees the Weeping Willow is the 

 most remarkable, from the perfect pendulous character of 

 its spray. It is also consecrated to the Muse by the part 

 which has been assigned to it in many a scene of ro- 

 mance, and by its connection with pathetic incidents 

 recorded in Holy Writ. It is invested with a moral in- 

 terest by its symbolical representation of sorrow, in the 

 drooping of its terminal spray, by its fanciful use as a 



