322 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



scale, yet it was perfectly accurate and full of detail. I 

 wish I could find it, but the confusion of time has scat- 

 tered and mixed these early papers. A map by Ptolemy 

 would bear as much resemblance to the same country in 

 a modern atlas as mine to the present state of that local- 

 ity. It is all gone — rubbed out. The names against the 

 whole of those houses have been altered, one only ex- 

 cepted, and changes have taken place there. Nothing 

 remains. This is not in a century, half a century, or 

 even in a quarter of a century, but in a few ticks of the 

 clock. 



I think I have heard that the oaks are down. They 

 may be standing or down, it matters nothing to me ; the 

 leaves I last saw upon them are gone for evermore, nor 

 shall I ever see them come there again ruddy in spring. 

 I would not see them again even if I could ; they could 

 never look again as they used to do. There are too many 

 memories there. The happiest days become the saddest 

 afterwards ; let us never go back, lest we too die. There 

 are no such oaks anywhere else, none so tall and straight, 

 and with such massive heads, on which the sun used to 

 shine as if on the globe of the earth, one side in shadow, 

 the other in bright light. How often I have looked at 

 oaks since, and yet have never been able to get the same 

 effect from them ! Like an old author printed in another 

 type, the words are the same, but the sentiment is differ- 

 ent. The brooks have ceased to run. There is no music 

 now at the old hatch where we used to sit in danger of 

 our lives, happy as kings, on the narrow bar over the 

 deep water. The barred pike that used to come up in 

 such numbers are no more among the flags. The perch 

 used to drift down the stream, and then bring up again. 

 The sun shone there for a very long time, and the water 

 rippled and sang, and it always seemed to me that I 



