342 THE YEW. 



sent the character of what they might well consider a 

 merciless destroyer; but such a feeling could have no 

 place with sober Christians. They, on the other hand, 

 would regard the perpetual verdure which overshadowed 

 the remains of their forefathers and was shortly destined 

 to canopy their own, as the most fitting expression of 

 their faith in the immortality of the soul. Generation 

 after generation might be gathered to their fathers, the 

 Yew-tree proclaiming to those who remained, that all, like 

 the ever-green, unchanging Yew, were yet living, in 

 another world, the life which had been the object of their 

 desire. The Yew, then, we may safely conclude, is not 

 an unmeaning decoration of our churchyards, much less 

 a heathenish symbol, or, as some will have it, a tree 

 planted with superstitious feelings, but an appropriate 

 religious emblem : 



" Of vast circumference, and gloom profound, 

 This solitary tree ! A living thing 

 Produced too slowly ever to decay ; 

 Of form and aspect too magnificent 

 To be destroyed." WORDSWORTH. 



Miss Kent quotes from Dr. Hunter a passage which 

 quite supports this view. "Dr. Hunter thinks the best 

 reason to be given for planting the Yew in churchyards 

 is, that the branches were often carried in procession on 

 Palm Sunday, instead of Palm." It is still customary in 

 Ireland for the peasants to wear sprigs of Yew in their hats 

 from that day until Easter-day. "Our forefathers," says 

 Martyn, "were particularly careful to preserve this fune- 

 real tree, whose branches it was usual to carry in solemn 

 procession to the grave, and afterwards to deposit therein 

 under the bodies of their departed friends. Our learned 

 Ray says that our ancestors planted the Yew in church- 

 yards because it was an evergreen tree, as a symbol of that 

 immortality which they hoped and expected for the 

 persons there deposited. For the same reason, this and 

 other evergreen trees are even yet carried in funerals, and 



