THE OAK. 33 



netting or cordage which is to be much exposed to the 

 weather. 



There is a particular interest connected with trees of 

 great antiquity which attaches itself to nothing else. A 

 nourishing Oak in the vigour of its age, furnished with a 

 well-proportioned, tapering trunk, and with symmetrically- 

 arranged branches, and flinging its chequered shade far and 

 near over the verdant sward, is a beautiful object, and 

 irresistibly draws the attention to itself. But it does not 

 carry the mind of the spectator back to past events, it does 

 not talk with us about bygone ages and scenes at which no 

 man now living was present and if we think of its future 

 fate, there is so much of uncertainty about that, so much 

 of doubt as to the length of time for which it is destined 

 to retain its position, whether it will be laid low by the 

 tempest, or by the woodman's axe, and, if the latter, to 

 what purposes it may be applied, that the mind can select 

 nothing sufficiently definite to engage itself upon. The 

 tan-yard, the saw-pit, and the baker's oven are decidedly 

 not subjects to dwell upon ; and these, in fact, are the 

 only passages in its history which can be predicted with 

 certainty. But the case is very different with the uncouth 

 monster on whom the destroyer has done all but his 

 utmost. Though but a hollow shell, blasted above, and 

 worm-eaten below, and indebted for its scanty verdure 

 more to ferns and moss than to the feeble relics of life 

 which yet remain in it, it is a monument of the past more 

 eloquent than buildings the most time-hallowed ; or,- save 

 one, than books of the most remote antiquity. It is now 

 a living tree, and it was the same thirty generations back. 

 Yes ! a thousand years ago it was a stately tree : when 

 the present dynasty commenced, it was older than the 

 oldest men then alive, and it has lived through all the 

 stirring events which have taken place from that time to 

 this, connecting the names of Stephenson and Tennyson 

 with those of Newton and Milton and Shakespeare, and 

 these with Caxton and Chaucer ; and having sprung from 

 o 3 



