THE OAK. 



37 



at one time got within the hollow of the trunk ; but, 

 on inquiry, I found many of these were children ; 

 and, as the tree is hollow throughout to the top, 

 I suppose they sat on each other's shoulders : yet, 

 without exaggeration, I believe the hollow capable 

 of containing forty men." The area occupied by 

 the Cowthorpe Oak, where the bottom of its trunk 

 meets the earth, exceeds, as Mr. Burgess remarks, 

 the ground-plot of that majestic column of which an 

 Oak is confessed to have been the prototype ; namely,^ 

 the Eddystone Light-house, raised by the ingenious 

 architect, Mr. Smeaton, after a model drawn from 

 an attentive study of the principles on which Nature 

 enables her gigantic vegetable structures to with- 

 stand, for centuries, the furious blasts that often lay 

 prostrate in a moment the proudest works of man : 

 sections of the stem of the one would, at several 

 heights, nearly agree with sections of the curved and 

 cylindrical portions of the shaft of the other ; and a 

 chamber of equal extent, or larger than either of those 

 in the light-house, might be hollowed out of its trunk. 

 It is undoubtedly the largest tree at present known 

 in the kingdom, and cannot be looked upon without 

 veneration and regard. 



When the huge trunk whose bare and forked arms ^ 

 Pierced the mid sky, now prone, shall bud no more, 

 Still let the massy ruin, like the bones 

 Of some majestic hero, be preserved 



Unviolated and revered 



Whilst the gray father of the vale, at eve. 



