FAMILIAR TREES. 



THE OAK. 



Quer'cus So' bur L. 



The Oak is justly the tree on which England prides 

 herself with more reason than upon those represen- 

 tative, but scarcely indigenous, animals, the lion and 

 the unicorn. Whatever we may think of the other 

 productions of the poetaster of whom Byron wrote 



" Let hoarse Fitzgerald bawl 

 His creaking couplets in a tavern hall " 



probably everyone will endorse the one line quoted 

 from him in the parody in " Rejected Addresses " 

 " The tree of freedom is the British Oak." 



So closely, indeed, is the tree associated in our 

 minds with the bygone triumphs of those " wooden 

 walls of England," the " hearts of oak," that the chief 

 ideas suggested by the beauty of the tree are apt 

 to be those of naval warfare, sailors' pluck, and 

 England's weathering many a storm. There are, 

 nevertheless, suggestions of a less warlike character 

 which occur to the contemplative man as he gazes 

 on the monarch of the forest. 



The massive trunk, whose noble proportions 

 suggested to Smeaton the design of his Eddystone 

 Lighthouse, is an emblem of majestic and sublime 

 21 i 



