156 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



production than the lady, for, so strong was his be- 

 lief in the truth of the whole tradition, that he would 

 have pledged his life that not a leaf was to have 

 been discovered on any part of the tree before the 

 usual hour." 



When young, the hawthorn grows rapidly, a shoot 

 of a single year being sufficient for a walking stick; 

 but when it stands to be a tree, it makes wood very 

 slowly, and lives to a great age. The wood is re- 

 markably durable : there is (or was, a few years ago) 

 a hawthorn in the cellar of Cawdor castle, in the 

 county of JVairn, which has been without leaves or 

 bark for more than a century, and which, tradition 

 says, has been in its present situation, and of its pre- 

 sent size, ever since the castle (which is a very old 

 one) was founded. 



The trunk of an old hawthorn is more gnarled and 

 rough than, perhaps, that of any other tree ; and this, 

 with its hoary appearance, and its fragrance, renders 

 it a favourite tree with pastoral and rustic poets, and 

 with those to whom they address their songs. Milton, 

 in his L'Allegro, has not forgotten this favourite of 

 the village: 



" Every shepherd tells his tale 

 liader the hawthorn in the dale." 



When Burns, with equal force and delicacy, deline- 

 ates the pure and unsophisticated affection of young, 

 intelligent, and innocent country people, as the most 

 enchanting of human feelings, he gives additional 

 sweetness to the picture by placing his lovers 



" Beneath the milk-white thorn, that scents the evening gale." 



There is something about the tree, which one bred in 

 the country cannot soon forget, and which a visitor 

 learns, perhaps, sooner than any association of placid 

 delight connected with rural scenery. When, too, the 

 traveller, or the man of the world, after a life spent in 

 other pursuits returns to the village of his nativity, the 



