92 VOICES FROM THE WOODLANDS. 



of which the great events alone stand forth in dim 

 obscurity, like blocks of granite among the glens and 

 undulations of Dartmoor. 



Dartmoor has its oaks, old, dwarfish from long years, 

 bald with dry antiquity, memorials of days long past, tell- 

 ing their sad tales of forgotten men. 



Immense masses of granite lie scattered in all directions, 

 and in their midst, either growing among them, or else 

 seeming to spring from out their interstices, arise, wildly 

 and widely scattered, a grove of dwarf oak-trees. Exposed 

 to the continual action of bleak winds, which rush past 

 their sterile growing- places, and, perhaps, deprived of the 

 stately trees which might have screened them from their 

 fury, they are very diminutive. Pew, if any, are more than 

 ten or twelve feet high, but, though stunted in their growth, 

 their topmost branches spread far and wide, twisted in the 

 most fantastic manner, and festooned occasionally with ivy 

 and creeping plants. Their trunks are so thickly covered 

 with fine velvet-looking moss, that they seem of enormous 



