out of bed, scrambled to the window, snatched aside the curtains, and just caught a glimpse of the rear of a person getting in at the coachdoor. The skirts of a brown coat parted behind, and gave me a full view of the broad disk of a pair of drab breeches. The door closed "All right!" was the word — the coach whirled off;-and that was all I ever saw of the stout gentleman!

Forest Trees.

"A living gallery of aged trees."

NE of the favorite themes of boasting with the Squire is the noble trees on his estate, which, in truth, has some of the finest I have seen in England. There is something august and solemn in the great avenues of stately oaks that gather

their branches together high in air, and seem to reduce the pedestrians beneath them to mere pigmies. "An avenue of oaks or elms," the Squire observes, "is the true colonnade that should lead to a gentleman's house. As to stone and marble, any one can rear them at once, they are the work of the day; but commend me to the colonnades which have grown old and great with the family, and tell

VOL. I.-8

by their grandeur how long the family has endured."

The Squire has great reverence for certain venerable trees, gray with moss, which he considers as the ancient nobility of his domain. There is the ruin of an enormous oak, which has been so much battered by time and tempest, that scarce anything is left; though he says Christy recollects when, in his boyhood, it was healthy and flourishing, until it was struck by lightning. It is now a mere trunk, with one twisted bough stretching up into the air, leaving a green branch at the end of it. This sturdy wreck is much valued by the Squire; he calls it a standard-bearer, and compares it to a veteran warrior beaten down in battle, but bearing up his banner to the last. He has actually had a fence built round it, to protect it as much as possible from further injury.

It is with great difficulty he can ever be brought to have any tree cut down on his estate. To some he looks with reverence, as having been planted by his ancestors; to others with a kind of paternal affection, as having been planted by himself; and he feels a degree of awe in bringing down, with a few strokes of the axe, what it has cost centuries to build up. I confess I cannot but sympa

thize, in some degree, with the good Squire on the subject. Though brought up in a country overrun with forests, where trees are apt to be considered mere incumbrances, and to be laid low without hesitation or remorse, yet I could never see a fine tree hewn down without concern. The poets, who are naturally lovers of trees, as they are of everything that is beautiful, have artfully awakened great interest in their favor, by representing them as the habitations of sylvan deities; insomuch that every great tree had its tutelar genius, or a nymph, whose existence was limited to its duration. Evelyn, in his Sylva, makes several pleasing and fanciful allusions to this superstition.

As the fall," says he, "of a very aged oak, giving a crack like thunder, has often been heard at many miles' distance; constrained though I often am to fell them with reluctance, I do not at any time remember to have heard the groans of those nymphs (grieving to be dispossessed of their ancient habitations) without some emotion and pity." And again, in alluding to a violent storm that had devastated the woodlands, he says: "Methinks I still hear, sure I am that I still feel, the dismal groans of our forests; the late dreadful hurricane having subverted so many thousands of goodly oaks, prostrating the trees, laying them

in ghastly postures, like whole regiments fallen in battle by the sword of the conqueror, and crushing all that grew beneath them. The public accounts," he adds, "reckon no less than three thousand brave oaks in one part only of the forest of Dean blown down."

I have paused more than once in the wilderness of America, to contemplate the traces of some blast of wind, which seemed to have rushed down from the clouds, and ripped its way through the bosom of the woodlands; rooting up, shivering, and splintering the stoutest trees, and leaving a long track of desolation. There was something awful in the vast havoc made among these gigantic plants; and in considering their magnificent remains, so rudely torn and mangled, and hurled down to perish prematurely on their native soil, I was conscious of a strong movement of the sympathy so feelingly expressed by Evelyn. I recollect, also, hearing a traveller of poetical temperament expressing the kind of horror which he felt on beholding, on the banks of the Missouri, an oak of prodigious size, which had been, in a manner, overpowered by an enormous wild grapevine. The vine had clasped its huge folds round the trunk, and thence had wound about every branch and twig, until the mighty tree had withered in its