The attitudes of oak trees are a very interesting study.  There is the oak which, bending forwards and stretching out a kindly hand, appears to offer a hearty welcome; the oak that starts backward in astonishment at any familiarity advanced by a passing stranger.  The oak that assumes an attitude of pride and self-importance; the oak that approaches a superior neighbour with an air of humility and abasement, listening subserviently to his commands.  The shrinking oak in dread of an enemy, and the oak prepared to offer a stout resistance.  The hopeful oak in the prime of life, and the oak that totters in desolate and crabbed old age.  The oak that enjoys in middle age the good things of life, with well-fed and rounded symmetry; and the oak that suggests decrepitude, with rough exterior, and a life-experience of hardship; the sturdy oak, the ambitious oak, the self-contained oak, and so on, through every phase of character.  No other tree is so human or so expressive, and no other tree bespeaks such fortitude and endurance.  To say that a well-grown oak typifies the reserve and strength of the true-born Briton, is perhaps to sum up its individuality in a word.

There is one old fellow who throws back his head and roars with laughter when I go by; what can be the joke?  I must stop some day and look to see if the sides of his rather tight jacket of Lincoln green moss are really splitting, and perhaps, if I can catch the pitch of his voice, I shall hear him whisper: 

     “A fool, a fool!  I met a fool i’ the forest.”

I like to think that these old personalities are transmigrations, and that each is now at leisure to correct some special mistake in a previous existence.  Perhaps, out there in the moonlight, they tell their stories to each other, and to the owls I hear at midnight performing an appropriately weird overture.

These talking oaks can only be found where they have grown from acorns naturally, and where they have survived the struggle of life against their enemies, including the interference of man, the attacks of grazing animals, the blasts of winter and the heavy burden of its snows.  The natural woods, as distinct from the plantations of the New Forest, offer many examples of these varying trees and the lessons they convey.  Such a piece of old natural forest almost surrounds my present home, and every time I pass through it I bless the memory of William the Conqueror.  Randolph Caldecott, that prince of illustrators of rural life, evidently noticed the characteristic attitudes of trees; look at the sympathetic dejection displayed by the two old pollard willows in his sketch of the maiden all forlorn, in The House that Jack Built.  The maiden has her handkerchief to her eyes, and in a few masterly strokes one of the trees is depicted with a falling tear, and the other bent double is hobbling along with a crutch supporting its withered and tottering frame.