250 A Walk from 



this long, leaf-arched aisle. Not forty, but nearer four 

 hundred years, doubtless, was that pile in building. 

 Architecture of the pre-Norman period, and of all 

 subsequent or cognate orders, diversifies the tastes and 

 shapings of the structure. Suppose the whole should 

 take fire to-night and burn to the ground. The 

 wealth of the owner could command genius, skill and 

 labor enough to rebuild it in three years, perhaps in 

 one. The Czar of all the Russias did as large a thing 

 once as this last, in the reconstruction of a palace. 

 Perhaps the building is insured for its positive value, 

 and the insurance money would erect a better one. 

 But lift an axe upon that tall centurion of these 

 templed elms. Cut through the closely-grained rings 

 that register each succeeding year of two centuries. 

 Hear the peculiar sounding of the heart strokes, when 

 the lofty, well-poised structure is balancing itself, and 

 quivering through every fibre and leaf and twig on the 

 few unsevered tendons that have not yet felt the keen 

 edge of the woodman's steel. See the first leaning it 

 cannot recover. Hear the first cracking of the central 

 vertebra ; then the mournful, moaning whir in the 

 air ; then the tremendous crash upon the green earth ; 

 the vibration of the mighty trunk on the ground, 

 like the writhing and tremor of an ox struck by 

 the butcher's axe ; the rebound into the air of dis- 



