DESCRIPTIVE ENUMERATION OE TREES. 51 



' Stat magni nominis umbra. 

 Qualis fi'ugifero quercus sublimis in agro 

 Exuvias veteres populi, sacrataque gestans 

 Dona ducum ; uec jam validis radicibus hiBrens, 

 Pondere fixa suo est, nudosque per aera ramos 

 Effundens, trunco, non frondibus efficit umbram.' 



Spenser has given us the same picture, but 

 with a few more circumstances. 



' A huge Oak, dry and dead. 

 Still clad with reliques of its trophies old, 

 Lifting to Heaven its aged, hoary head, 

 Whose foot on earth hath got but feeble hold, 

 And half disbowell'd stands above the ground. 

 With vi^reathed roots, and naked arms, 

 And trunk all rotten, and unsound.' 



I have dwelt the longer on the Oak, as it is, con- 

 fessedly, both the most picturesque tree in itself, 

 and the most accommodating in composition. It 

 refuses no subject either in natural or in artificial 

 landscape. It is suited to the grandest, and may 

 with propriety be introduced into the most pastoral. 

 It adds new dignity to the ruined tower and 

 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 throw its 



