HOW TO GROW GOOD TIMBER.
CHAPTER XL.
ON THE VALUE OF TIMBER FOR ORNAMENT AND PROFIT.
Among all the varied productions (says Strutt[26]) with which nature has adorned the surface of the earth, none awakens our sympathies, or interests our imagination, so powerfully as those venerable trees which seem to have stood the lapse of ages—silent witnesses of the successive generations of man, to whose destiny they bear so touching a resemblance, alike in their budding, their pride, and their decay.
[26] Introduction to “Sylva Britannica.”
Hence, in all ages, the earliest dawn of civilization has been marked by a reverence of woods and groves; devotion has fled to their recesses for the performance of her most solemn rites; princes have chosen the embowering shade of some wide-spreading tree, under which to receive the deputations of the neighbouring “great ones of the earth;” and angels themselves, it is recorded, have not disdained to deliver their celestial messages beneath the same verdant canopy. To sit under the shadow of his own fig-tree, and drink of the fruit of his own vine, is the reward promised, in Holy Writ, to the righteous man; and the gratification arising from the site of a favoured and long-remembered tree is one enjoyed in common by the peer, whom it reminds, as its branches wave over his head whilst wandering in his hereditary domains, of the illustrious ancestors who may have seen it planted; and by the peasant, who recalls, as he looks on it in his way to his daily labours, the sports of his infancy round its venerable trunk, and regards it at once as his chronicler and landmark.
Who indeed amongst us, in whatever position of life he may be, or in what land soever his lot may be cast, does not often find his mind’s eye resting upon some favourite tree; it may be some huge elm on his village green, where, in the dim twilight, he either told or listened to the fairy tale or exciting ghost story; or the spreading oak, beneath whose shade he has picnicked; or the haunted grove, where his tale, though only whispered, yet spoke loudly to a willing listener.