HISTORIC TREES 207 



may be shaped into Agincourt, and the names of 

 the battlefields of the Roses; oaks that dropped 

 their acorns in the year that Henry VIII. held his 

 field of the Cloth of Gold, and beeches that gave 

 shelter to the deer when Shakespeare was a boy. 

 There they stand, in sun and shower, the broad- 

 armed witnesses of perished centuries; and sore must 

 his need be who commands a woodland massacre. 

 A great tree, the rings of a century in its boll, is one 

 of the noblest of natural objects; and it touches the 

 imagination no less than the eye, for it grows out of 

 tradition and a past order of things, and is pathetic 

 with the suggestions of dead generations. Trees 

 waving a colony of rooks in the wind to-day are 

 older than historic lines. Trees are your best 

 antiques. There are cedars on Lebanon which the 

 axes of Solomon spared, they say, when he was busy 

 with his Temple; there are olives on Olivet that 

 might have rustled in the ears of the Master of the 

 Twelve; there are oaks in Sherwood which have 

 tingled to the horn of Robin Hood, and have lis- 

 tened to Maid Marian's laugh. Think of an exist- 

 ing Syrian cedar which is nearly as old as history, 

 which was middle-aged before the wolf suckled 

 Romulus; think of an existing English elm in whose 

 branches the heron was reared which the hawks 

 of Saxon Harold killed! If you are a notable, and 

 wish to be remembered, better plant a tree than 

 build a city or strike a medal it will outlast both. 



