SESSILE-FRUITED OAK. 



28: 



and welfare of our sea-girt land, it possesses all those 

 characteristics which are considered necessary to give it 

 that value and peculiar effect which alone can satisfy 

 the eye of the painter or the lover of the picturesque. 

 Gilpin, whose taste for natural beauties no one will im- 

 pugn, after quoting Virgil's graphic description of the Oak, 

 commencing, 



Esculus imprimis, &c. 



and dwelling upon its massive and well-balanced trunk, 

 characteristic of its firmness and strength, the stoutness 

 of its limbs, appearing, as it were, to be portions of the 

 stem itself, rather than to spring from it like those of 

 most other trees, its twisted and contorted branches, 

 " which like a river sport and play in every direction, 

 sometimes in long reaches and sometimes in shorter el- 

 bows, 1 '' its expansive spread, and its longevity, thus con- 

 cludes his observations, " I have dwelt the longer on the 

 Oak, as it is confessedly both the most picturesque tree 

 in itself, and the most accommodating in composition. 

 It refuses no subject, either in natural or artificial land- 

 scape ; it is suited to the grandest, and may with pro- 

 priety be introduced into the most pastoral. It adds new 

 dignity to the ruined tower and the gothic arch ; by 

 stretching its wild moss-grown branches athwart their 

 ivied walls, it gives them a kind of majesty coeval with 

 itself; at the same time, its propriety is still preserved 

 if it throws its arms over the purling brook or the man- 

 tling pool, where it beholds 



• Its reverend image in the expanse below.' " 



Mr Strutt, also, whose delineations of British trees and 

 forest scenery stand unrivalled for their truth, beauty, 

 and artist-like effect, in some valuable remarks on the 



