MISS ROBERTS'S RUINS AND OLD TREES.
PROPERLY treated, "Ruins and Old Trees" are a very good sub- ject for that desultory kind of literature which for want of a more distinctive title is called miscellaneous. The objects themselves and their neighbourhood furnish description ; the history or le- gend attached to them will supply a narrative either interesting in itself or illustrative of olden times, or both ; whilst natural his- tory and science are at hand for interesting or instructive facts respecting the growth and character of plants, and the principles and progress of architecture. The danger of these subjects lies in adopting an improper mode of treatment : too much may be attempted, and yet too little. It seems so grand, and is so easy, to begin with the time when the building was first erected, or the tree is supposed to have sprung from the earth, and then to run through the ages that have since elapsed, distilling the historical essence from any common history, and taking the antiquities from the county topography. On the other hand, description requires a cultivated eye as well as a natural gift. Where trees of a great age remain, the adjacent country generally preserves indications of the different changes time and improvement have produced, slight possibly, and not obvious to ignorance, but palpable enough to skill. Most ruins of any kind, and many remarkable trees, have something peculiar in their real or legendary history which gives them an individual character, separating them from other things of a similar nature, rendering what is true of them true of nothing else, and imparting the interest which always arises from truth. But to observe the natural features, or to glean the antiquarian traits, is a slow and laborious task ; to apply them requires an artistical skill, and to select them requires a certain degree of artistical courage that can boldly rely upon simple nature. It is easier and quicker, as it looks finer and more effective, to introduce a fluent and fancy sketch of the great historical epochs, or what not, with which the trees or stone walls were contemporary ; and the more fluent and accomplished the writer is, the greater the danger of falling into this mistake.
And this mistake Miss ROBERTS has not quite escaped : which diminishes the interest that would otherwise attach to her evident enthusiasm in her subject, her elegant and cultivated mind, and her eloquent style. Her first topic, for instance, is " Melksham Court," its ancient yew-tree, and the ruins of the mansion- house ; and the theme is properly the escape of an ancestor of our authoress by means of the yew-tree, and the destruction of his house during the civil wars. Immediately connected with this leading subject is the history of this gentleman's family, and more remotely the genealogy of the previous possessors of the estate ; only that little seems to be known about them. Not content with this, however, Miss ROBERTS touches upon the ancient Britons, Roman colonization, the Saxon advent, and the Norman conquest ; and though all this is done gracefully enough, yet the process is so easy as to have become common, and so general as only to please the uncritical, and not them if they have read much.
" Melksham Court" is perhaps the largest mistake in this line; for having once run over the annals of the land, it could not well be done again : but "Wallace's Oak" leads to the commonplaces per- sonified of Scottish history during Edward's invasion; "The Queen's Oak," where Elizabeth Woodville met Edward the Fourth, gives rise to the whole story of her troubles from Queen Margaret and Richard the Third ; and most of the topics with lesser themes are treated in a manner equally diffuse. The best of the historical subjects is the tree whence the arrow glanced that killed William Rufus ; because the cruelties attending the formation of the forest have a relation in the popular mind to the personal misfortunes both of the Conqueror and his family, as the effects of a "judgment." The matter being fuller, the treatment is also more distinct, and the narrative less imaginary. "Old Trees in Hyde Park" has some real interest ; for though we again get back to the Britons and 'Romans, it is to give information connected with the present park, which once formed part of a forest spreading across the country from the Channel to the German Ocean. The "Beech of the Frith Common," the " Salcey Oak," and "Old Trees in Welbeck Park," are the only articles in which no aid is attempted to be
drawn from adventitious sources ; and though rather partaking of reflection than description, they are the three best, excepting the paper on the New Forest ; for they are more germane to the theme— as, for example, this passage from
THE BEECH OP THE FRITH COMMON.
Let him who loves to mark the changes of the seasons, and to watch the alternations which spring and summer, autumn and winter, produce in the vegetable kingdom, stand beside one of those magnificent columns which spring from out the parent earth and bear on high a canopy of branches. Let him choose that season when the leaves are just beginning to expand, when the swelling buds assume a reddish tint, and here and there a young green leaf has unfolded in all its freshness and its beauty, as yet unsoiled by spassing atom or unbeaten by a single rain-drop. The clouds, how beautiful they look, and the deep blue sky above them !—for both are clearly seen through the ramified branches : the first, when driven swiftly by soft breezes from the West ; the other, in all its grandeur and extent, as when the morning-stars rejoiced to- gether, and it first appeared like a glorious pavilion based on the distant hills. Such is the Beech of the Frith Common. It stands alone in the centre of a beautiful common, covered with wild flowers and short herbage, and the fragrant thyme, among which the industrious bee loves to nestle and to gather in her harvests. The nest of the skylark is among the juniper-bushes that 'kid the margin of the common ; its joyous tenant is up in air, warbling and rejoicing, and making his high home resound with melody.
There is anecdote illustration and scientific knowledge ia the following- " Here then stands the beech-tree, in all its dignity and fair proportions, its firm trunk based in the earth, but with no gnarled roots upheaving the soil around and making it unsightly. When the celebrated Smeaton pondered within himself concerning the possibility of constructing a building on the Eddystone rock which might resist the tremendous violence of contending seas, which had swept away the previous erections of Winstanley and Rudyerd and left not a stone remaining,—seas which dash at least two hundred feet above the rock, and the sound of whose deafening surges resembles the con- tinuous roar of thunder,—his thoughts involuntarily turned towards the oak. He considered its large swelling base, which becomes reduced to one-third, occasionally to one-half of its original dimensions, by a gradual and upward tapering of the living shaft ; and it appeared to him that a building might be erected on the model of the oak that would be fully able to resist the action of external violence. Thus thinking, he projected the lighthouse of Eddystone ; which soon proved, amid the tremendous fury of contending elements, that he had not erred in taking nature for his guide. A beech or elm might have sug- gested the same thought, for in the trunk of every forest-tree the material is se disposed that the greater portion pertains to the base of the column : that part, especially, which rises from the root is thickest ; and why is this? not only because a tapering column is far more beautiful than one of equal girth, but because the disturbing force at the top acts more powerfully on the lower sections than on the higher. It is needful that the base of the column should be strengthened, and it is equally unnecessary that the top should be of the same thickness as the base. Two purposes are consequently answered—the tree is rendered stronger and more elegant, and a certain portion of material is given to one part without weakening the other. A tree is, therefore, equally adapted by its construction to resist the fury of the tempest—of that unseen yet mighty force which comes against it when the fierce Northern blast howls through the forest, as also the load of snow which often presses heavily upon its topmost branches."
SIZE OP TEEM
Our native woods often contain noble specimens of which the bulk is ten or twelve feet in diameter, a width greater by three feet than the carriage-way _of Fetter Lane near Temple Bar ; and oaks might be named on the block of which two men could thresh without incommoding one the other. The famous Greendale Oak is pierced by a road, over which it forms a triumphal arch, higher by several inches than the poets' postern at Westminster Abbey. The celebrated table in Dudley Castle which is formed of a single oaken plank is longer than the wooden bridge that crosses the lake in the Regent's Park ; and the roof of the great hall of Westminster, which is spoken of with admira- tion on account of its vast span, being unsupported by a single pillar, is little more than one-third the width of the noble canopy of waving branches that are upheld by the Worksop Oak. The massive rafters of the spacious roof rest on strong walls, but the branches of the tree spring from one common centre. Architects can alone estimate the excessive purchase which boughs of at least one hundred and eighty-nine feet must have on the trunk into which they are inserted. Those of the Oak of Ellerslie cover a Scotch acre of ground; and in the Three-shire Oak its branches drip over an extent of seven hundred and seven square yards. The tree itself grows in a nook that is formed by the junction of the three counties of York, Nottingham, and Derby.
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