46 



golden fringe which adorn nature's noblest and 

 grandest garment : clad in these, she is not on- 

 ly infinitely beautiful, but trenscendently excel- 

 lent ; such will the eye ever admire 1 Strip 

 nature of trees, and she looks like a naked man 

 in a winter day, disgusting to the eye, and 

 shuddering to the heart — strip nature of trees, 

 and there is a blank which no human art or inge- 

 nuity can supply, whether we view them as a na- 

 tional or individual ornament or profit. The pro- 

 prietor who rears up and spares old healthy trees 

 of oak, Spanish chesnut, bequeathes an in- 

 valuable treasure to his posterity;* and he who 



* Let loves own altar honour'd be. 

 Spare, woodman spare, the beechen tree. 



Lord Byron's fine simile, written beneath an elm in the church-yard 

 of Harrow-on-the-Hill, September 2, 1807, will be acceptable to 

 every lover of trees : — 



Spot of my youth ! whose hoary branches sigh^ 

 Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky ; 

 Where now alone, I muse, who oft have trod. 

 With those I lov'd, thy soft and verdant sod ; 

 With those, who scattered far, perchance deplore^, 

 Like me, the happy scenes they knew before ; 

 Oh ! as I trace again thy winding hill. 

 Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still. 

 Thou drooping elm, beneath whose boughs I lay, 

 And frequent mus'd the twilight hours away ; 

 Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline. 

 But ah ! without the thoughts which then were mine ; 

 How do thy branches, moaning to the blast. 

 Invite the bosom to recall the past, 

 And seem to whisper, as they gently swell. 



Take while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell !" 

 When Fate shall chill at length this fever'd breast, 

 . And cahn its cares and passions into rest ; 



