CLIPPING EVERGREEN AND OTHER TREES. 247 



And even when the storm is past we hear delicate music in the 

 free Pine tips. 



" What noise is this? what low and solemn tone, 



Which, though all wings of all the winds seem furled, 



Nor even the zephyr's fairy flute is blown, 



Makes thus for ever its mysterious moan 



From out the whispering Pine-tops' shadowy world ? 



Ah, can it be the antique tales are true ? 



Doth some lone Dryad haunt the breezeless air, 

 Fronting yon bright immitigable blue, 

 And wildly breathing all her wild soul through 



That strange unearthly music of despair? 



Or, can it be that ages since, storm-tossed, 



And driven far inland from the roaring lea, 

 Some baffled ocean spirit, worn and lost, 

 Here, through dry summer's dearth and winter's frost, 



Yearns for the sharp sweet kisses of the sea?" 



The fifth objection is that the constant mutilation of trees leads 

 to disease not unfrequently, as may be seen at Versailles. In the 



Derbyshire examples the stems of dead Pines are 

 Death and disease, shown in the pictures ! It is simply an end one 



might expect from the annual mutilation of a 

 forest tree, which the Yew certainly is, as we see it among the Cedars 

 on the mountains of North Africa, as well as in our own country and 

 in Western Europe. Other trees of the same great Pine order are 

 yet more impatient of the shears, and some of them, like the Cedar, 

 escape solely because of their dignity. However, we distort the Yew, 

 which is in nature sometimes as fine as a Cedar. 



The maze is an inheritance from a past time, but not a precious 

 one, being one of the notions about gardening which arose when 



people had very little idea of the infinite beauty 

 The maze. of the garden flora as we now know it. Some 



people may be wealthy enough to show us all the 

 beauty of a garden and at the same time such ugly frivolities as this, 

 but they must be few. The maze is not pretty as part of a home 

 landscape or garden, and should be left for the most part to places 

 of the public tea-garden kind. One of its drawbacks is the death 

 and distortion of the evergreens that go to form its close lines, owing 

 to the frequent clipping ; if clipping be neglected the end is still 

 worse, and the whole thing is soon ready for the fire. 



