30 



SYLVA BRITANNIC A. 



THE CREEPING OAK, 



so called from the circumstance of one of its main 

 limbs having crept so closely to the earth in its youth, 

 that in its old age it actually reclines the weight of 

 its increasing years upon the ground ; forming, in 

 doing so, a pleasing irregularity of outline very agree- 

 able to the eye of a painter, which naturally abhor- 

 reth the idea of a straight line, as much as Descartes 

 did that of a vacuum. Never were noble avenues 

 and " alleys green " seen in more beauty than on 

 the lovely day in autumn, when this sketch was 

 made amid their variegated shades. " Every season 

 has its peculiar product, and is pleasing or admirable 

 from causes that variously affect our different tem- 

 peraments or dispositions ; but there are accompani- 

 ments in an autumnal morning's woodland walk, 

 that call for all our notice and admiration : the pecu- 

 liar feeling of the air, and the solemn grandeur of 

 the scene around us, dispose the mind to contempla- 

 tion and remark : there is a silence in which we hear 

 everything: a beauty that will be observed. The 

 stump of an old oak is a very landscape — with rugged 

 alpine steeps bursting through forests of verdant 

 mosses, with some pale denuded branchless lichen, 

 like a scathed oak, creeping up the sides or crown- 

 ing the summit. Rambling with unfettered grace. 



