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SYLVA BRITANNICA. 



THE FALLEN CHESNUT. 



In Cobham Park, not far from the Four Sisters, 

 is one of those accidents of nature so pleasing to a 

 painter to meet with in his rambles, and so well 

 calculated to tempt the poetical imagination to mo- 

 ralise the spectacle " into a thousand similes." 

 " Delighting thus in trees," says an elegant writer, 

 who has withheld his name from the respect his 

 genius would secure to it, " I must more than others 

 grieve for their loss, and a storm awakens in me 

 almost the fears of those whose friends are mariners. 

 I dread to see the shivered tops and the scattered 

 boughs. The great tree torn up by its roots, lying- 

 in gigantic length, along the ground it yesterday 

 shaded, rending the green-sward into an unsightly 

 broken mound, showing the strong hold in the earth 

 which it had firmly grappled, now broken and for 

 ever destroyed — is to me a sight the most mournful : 

 it seems to me almost the overthrow of a living being 

 of power and might, so long had it stood erect and 

 nobly immoveable in the war of elements. The 

 pride of its foliage, the majesty of its leafy head, 

 now low in the dust, are indeed piteous to beheld. 

 The storms it has so often braved, at last prevail, 

 and by one dread gust it falls before the breath of 

 heaven." With equal feeling, and still more strength. 



