COMMON YEW. 365 



passed for these purposes in various reigns, as well as 

 to forbid the exportation of a wood of such value and 

 importance to the kingdom. 



In this state of honourable distinction the Yew long 

 continued ; and it was not till the reign of Elizabeth, 

 at which period the introduction of fire-arms began to 

 be general and to supersede the use of the more pri- 

 mitive weapon, that the motives which had previously 

 protected and encouraged its growth, and had given such 

 value to its tough and elastic fibre, ceased to exist, or that 

 those associations long connected with it were forgotten, 

 and no longer exerted their influence in its favour. These 

 feelings once at an end, the Yew seems to have fallen 

 into a state of comparative oblivion and neglect, and so 

 continued till Evelyn again brought it into a certain 

 degree of repute, not, however, for the qualities which 

 at an earlier period had given it such celebrity, but as 

 an ornament to the gardens and pleasure-grounds of the 

 gentry of his day, either for hedges of shelter and defence, 

 or as ornamental appendages, when fashioned by the shears 

 into the forms of birds, animals, cones, pyramids, and other 

 fantastic devices. This practice of torturing the Yew into 

 such a diversity of shapes continued to prevail for many 

 years, or until the time of William III., when it yielded 

 to the ridicule that was launched against it, and gradually 

 gave way to the present less formal style of garden em- 

 bellishment. Examples, however, of clipped Yew hedges 

 and fanciful forms cut out of the living tree are still to be 

 seen in some few of our oldest English flower-gardens ; 

 and, from the striking and peculiar effect they often pro- 

 duce, we are almost disposed to wish, with Mr. Loudon, 

 that the taste was again, at least partially, revived, and 

 introduced into some of the gardens of those Gothic and 



