“For what on earth can the Bishop want to see the breeches I wore at Waterloo?” said the Duke; but taking a charitable view of the matter he decided that the poor old Bishop must be getting irresponsible and replied that he was giving his valet instructions to show the Bishop the garments in question, whenever it suited him to inspect them.  The Bishop was equally amazed, but took exactly the same view about the Duke as the latter had decided upon concerning the Bishop.  No doubt the mystery was eventually cleared up, and Bishop and Duke must have both enjoyed the joke.

The shade of the beech is so dense that grass will not grow beneath it; it gradually kills even holly, which is comparatively flourishing under the oak.  The beech woods in the Forest are thus quite free from undergrowth, and the noble trees with their smooth ash-coloured stems can be seen in perfection, giving a cathedral aisle effect, which is erroneously said to have suggested the massive columns and groined roofs of Gothic architecture.

     “Where thro’ the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
     The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.”

There is, too, an unearthly effect at times to be seen beneath them, so exaggerated as to remind one of the stage setting of a pastoral play, with all the enhancing artificial contrivance of light and shade.  It is to be seen only on a brilliantly sunny day, where the contour of the space around the stem and below the branches takes the form of an arched cavern, flooded by a single shaft of sunlight, piercing the foliage at one particular spot, lighting up the floor carpeted with last year’s red-brown leaves, and emphasizing the gloom of the walls and roof.  Imagination instantly supplies the players, for a more perfect setting for Rosalind and Celia, Orlando and the melancholy Jaques, it would be impossible to conceive.  It is said that the ancient Greeks could see with their ears and hear with their eyes, a privilege doubtless granted to the nature lover in all ages.  In the Forest some of the most ancient and remarkable trees have borne for generations descriptive names such as the King and Queen oaks at Boldrewood, and the Eagle oak in Knightwood.  The communion between human and tree life is well illustrated by a passage from Thoreau’s Walden:  “I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.”

At Aldington a most valuable tree was the willow, or “withy,” as it is called in Worcestershire, though in Hampshire the latter name is given to the Goat willow, or sallow ("sally,” in Worcestershire), bearing the pretty blossoms known as palms, which in former times were worn by men and boys in country places on Palm Sunday.  My brooks were bordered on both sides by pollard withies, the whole being divided into seven parts or annual cuts, so that, as they are lopped every seven years a cut came in for lopping