XCIV.
In one of the comers of the little garden that surrounded our house there stood a cluster of trees, comprising a few evergreen oaks, two or three lime trees, and seven or eight twisted elms, which were the remains of a wood, planted centuries ago, and had, doubtless, been respected as the local Genius when the hill had been cleared, the house built, and the garden first walled in. These lofty trees in summer time served as a family saloon, in the open air. Their buds in spring, their tints in autumn, and their dry leaves in winter, which were succeeded by the hoar frost hanging from their branches like white hair, had marked the seasons for us. Their shadows, rolled back upon their very feet, or stretched out to the grassy border around, told us the hours better than a dial. Beneath their foliage our mother had nursed us, lulled us to rest, and taught us our first steps. My father sat there, book in hand, when he returned from shooting; his shining gun suspended from a branch, his panting dogs crouching beneath the bench. I, too, had spent there the fairest hours of my boyhood, with Homer or Telemachus lying open on the grass before me. I loved to lie flat on the warm turf, my elbows resting on the volume, of which a passing fly or lizard would sometimes hide the lines. The nightingales among the branches sang for our home, though we could never find their nest, or even see the branch from which their song burst forth. This grove was the pride, the recollection, the love of all. The idea of converting it into a small bag of money, which would leave no memory in the heart, no perpetual joy and shade, would have occurred to no one, save to a mother, trembling with anxiety for the life of an only son. My mother conceived the thought; and, with the readiness and firmness of resolve that distinguished her, called for the woodcutters as soon as morning came,—fearing lest she should feel remorse, or my entreaties stop her, if she first consulted me. She saw the axe laid to their roots, and wept, and turned away her head not to hear their moan, or witness the fall of these leafy protectors of her youth on the echoing and desolate soil of the garden.