OBLBBEATBD TBEES. 183 



stein of fifty feet before it broke into branches, 

 and was cut into a beam five feet square. The 

 next in size was called the Queen's Oah, and sur- 

 vived the calamities of the civil wars in King 

 Charles's time, though Donnington Castle and 

 the country around it were so often the scene of 

 action and desolation. Its branches were very 

 curious ; they pushed out from the stem in several 

 ■uncommon directions, imitating the horns of a 

 ram rather than the branches of an Oak. When 

 it was felled, it yielded a beam forty feet long, 

 without knot or blemish, perfectly straight, four 

 feet square at the butt end, and near a yard at 

 tlie top. The third of these Oaks was called 

 Chaucer'' s, of which we have no particulars; in 

 general, only, we are told that it was a noble tree, 

 though inferior to either of the others.* None of 

 them, I should suppose from this account, was a 

 tree of picturesque beauty. A straight stem, of 

 forty or fifty feet, let its head be what it will, can 

 hardly produce a picturesque form. When we 

 admired the Stone Pine, we supposed its stem to 



* See Evelyn's Sylva, p. 227. 



