THE YEW. 65 



holds itself unchanged for centuries, and is the most imposing picture 

 nature affords of imperturbable endurance. So, too, upon many a 

 remote hill-side, beaten and ravaged by tempests ; exposure to the wrath 

 of the elements seems congenial, and to live in the midst of perils, joy 

 and strength. Being an evergreen too, it contrasts finely with the 

 deciduous trees that ordinarily are not far off, or that circle it as com- 

 panions ; even with other evergreens it has a contrast such as no other 

 developes, since the young growth which makes its onward push in the 

 spring, is of the same unyielding tint as the oldest foliage. 



Once a year, at least, we see all other evergreens decked with light 

 and pretty shades of verdure, indicating the flow of their annual tide of 

 life ; the yew, inexorable to the last, gives no register of the seasons, 

 and makes no comment on their lapse. Only for a brief period, when 

 the fruit, looking as if wrought of chalcedony, crimsons before the last 

 sunshine of the autumn, does the yew seem affected by nature's kind- 

 nesses and genialities. Instead of an emblem of death and sorrow, it 

 should stand, therefore, as the representative of intrepidity and the 

 impregnable, and I cannot but think that some such view of its true 

 significance must have actuated those who either laid the foundations of 

 their churches and abbeys close to existing yews, or who having raised 

 such buildings, then planted yew-trees close alongside. For what more 

 sublime picture of the endurance of God's kingdom could be selected, 

 or what emblem more exact of the immortality of man ? To this day 

 stand the three old yews beneath which the founders of Fountains 

 Abbey sat themselves down in rural council. Ages have passed away 

 since the sound of vespers fell from those beautiful aisles upon the ear 

 of the wayfarer who lingered to gather cowslips in the meads around, 

 or to note the tender blue of the innumerable forget-me-not, or to mark 

 the flow of the tranquil river, and its darting fishes ; everything is 

 gone except the sweet and solemn requiem pronounced by ruin, 

 everything except those grand old trees, which seem capable of witness- 

 ing the rise and fall of just such another fabric, were some architect to 

 tempt them with renewal of the old magnificence. 



It may be useful and practically good to deem the yew an emblem of 

 death. We are taught here, as in a thousand other places, that it is 

 better to deem it an emblem of the changeless, that is to say, of Life. 

 Nothing is lost, and everything is gained, by letting nature speak to us, 

 whenever she will, of immortality. The lesson of death and decay is 

 too plainly and too constantly recited to make it needful that we should 

 go out of our way for illustrations ; much more should we refrain from 



