286 THE OLD WILLOW. 



charms, we considered to the full as much our own property as 

 its legal owner's. To him it is nothing, probably, but a hollow 

 worthless stump : to us, it is a perfect treasure-house, more 

 full, a thousand times, in its mouldering decay, than it was in its 

 solid strength. The arm of lightning, shivering picturesquely 

 its highest branch, has struck it into coin for the painter's 

 mint ; but it is the gentler hand of Time which has moulded 

 it for us into a casket, and prepared it for the reception of 

 living treasures, aurelia of Moth, or grub of Beetle, en- 

 sconced beneath the case of rotten wood and bulging bark, or 

 packed in its soft lining, the vegetable mould which fills the 

 hollow of the trunk. But though the season was favourable, 

 we were not in search of insects in the shape of chrysalis, or 

 any other. Our trowel and collecting box were left at home, 

 for we had come out solely for a walk, and with intent to en- 

 joy ourselves as unreflectively as the giddiest flutterer of the 

 tribe just wakened into life. It was not, then, our " hobby" 

 which carried us this time to the willow, neither was it alto- 

 gether habit : but this, our favourite tree, having grown old 

 without having withal grown crabbed, still offered to its 

 visitors, besides a pleasant shade, a comfortable seat formed 

 by one of the knobby excrescences which bulged from the 

 trunk at a convenient distance from the ground. It presented 

 them, besides, in the clear dark pond it overshadowed, with a 

 looking-glass, that faithful mirror which from sapling youth 

 to stricken age had reflected its own form, and over which, 



