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size and height. Even then, the certainty often fails to 

 impress the mind, for figures convey but an imperfect 

 conception of length and breadth, of height and girth. 

 Some more familiar illustrations are wanting to prove 

 that many a majestic tree, which is admired among its 

 sylvan brethren, as the proudest ornament of a park or 

 forest, is in reality an enormous mass, which the passer- 

 by would gaze at with awe and admiration, if seen 

 beside the dwellings and the palaces of men ; or com- 

 pared with the moving objects which pass and repass in 

 the streets of a great city. Our native woods often con- 

 tain noble specimens, of which the bulk is ten or 

 twelve feet in diameter, a width greater by three feet 

 than the carriage-way of Fetter lane, near Temple- 

 bar ; and oaks might be named, on the block of 

 which two men could thresh without incommoding one 

 the other. The famous Greendale Oak is pierced by a 

 road, over which it forms a triumphal arch, higher by 

 several inches than the poets' postern at Westminster 

 Abbey. The celebrated table in Dudley Castle which is 

 formed of a single oaken plank, is longer than the 

 wooden bridge that crosses the lake in the Regent's 

 park; and the roof of the great hall of Westminster, 

 which is spoken of with admiration on account of its 

 vast span, being unsupported by a single pillar, is little 

 more than one-third the width of the noble canopy of 

 waving branches that are upheld by the Worksop Oak. 

 The massive rafters of the spacious roof rest on strong 



