30 SYLVA BRITANNICA. 



THE CREEPING OAK, 



so called from the circumstance of one of its 

 main limbs having crept so closely to the earth in 

 its youth, that in its old age it actually reclines the 

 weight of its increasing years upon the ground ; 

 forming, in doing so, a pleasing irregularity of out- 

 line very agreeable to the eye of a painter, which 

 naturally abhorreth the idea of a straight line, as 

 much as Descartes did that of a vacuum. Never 

 were noble avenues and " alleys green" seen in 

 more beauty than on the lovely day, in autumn, 

 when this sketch was made amid their variegated 

 shades. " Every season has its peculiar product, 

 and is pleasing or admirable from causes that vari- 

 ously affect our different temperaments or dispo- 

 sitions ; but there are accompaniments in an autum- 

 nal morning's woodland walk, that call for all our 

 notice and admiration : the peculiar feeling of the 

 air, and the solemn grandeur of the scene around 

 us, dispose the mind to contemplation and remark : 

 there is a silence in which we hear every thing : a 

 beauty that will be observed. The stump of an old 

 oak is a very landscape with rugged alpine steeps 

 bursting through forests of verdant mosses, with 

 some pale denuded branchless lichen, like a scathed 

 oak, creeping up the sides or crowning the summit. 



