more than its brothers and sisters it was in no way exposed.  These are the tragedies of the garden, and they shadow forth other tragedies nearer us.  In everything we find a kind of dim mirror of ourselves.  Sterne, if placed in a desert, said he would love a tree; and I can fancy such a love would not be altogether unsatisfying.  Love of trees and plants is safe.  You do not run risk in your affections.  They are my children, silent and beautiful, untouched by any passion, unpolluted by evil tempers; for me they leaf and flower themselves.  In autumn they put off their rich apparel, but next year they are back again, with dresses fair as ever; and—­one can extract a kind of fanciful bitterness from the thought—­should I be laid in my grave in winter, they would all in spring be back again, with faces a bright and with breaths as sweet, missing me not at all.  Ungrateful, the one I am fondest of would blossom very prettily if planted on the soil that covers me,—­where my dog would die, where my best friend would perhaps raise an inscription!

I like flowering plants, but I like trees more,—­for the reason, I suppose, that they are slower in coming to maturity, are longer lived, that you can become better acquainted with them, and that in the course of years memories and associations hang as thickly on their boughs as do leaves in summer or fruits in autumn.  I do not wonder that great earls value their trees, and never, save in direst extremity, lift upon them the axe.  Ancient descent and glory are made audible in the proud murmur of immemorial woods.  There are forests in England whose leafy noises may be shaped into Agincourt and the names of the battle-fields of the Roses; oaks that dropped their acorns in the year that Henry VIII. held his Field of the Cloth of Gold, and beeches that gave shelter to the deer when Shakspeare was a boy.  There they stand, in sun and shower, the broad-armed witnesses of perished centuries; and sore must his need be who commands a woodland massacre.  A great English tree, the rings of a century in its boll, is one of the noblest of natural objects; and it touches the imagination no less than the eye, for it grows out of tradition and a past order of things, and is pathetic with the suggestions of dead generations.  Trees waving a colony of rooks in the wind to-day, are older than historic lines.  Trees are your best antiques.  There are cedars on Lebanon which the axes of Solomon spared, they say, when he was busy with his Temple; there are olives on Olivet that might have rustled in the ears of the Master and the Twelve; there are oaks in Sherwood which have tingled to the horn of Robin Hood, and have listened to Maid Marian’s laugh.  Think of an existing Syrian cedar which is nearly as old as history, which was middle-aged before the wolf suckled Romulus!  Think of an existing English elm in whose branches the heron was reared which the hawks of Saxon Harold killed!  If you are a notable, and wish to be remembered, better plant a tree than build a city or strike a medal; it will outlast both.