MULIERUM AMANTISSIMA!
VALE!

I wonder that any one could have had the heart to remove or to destroy
so interesting a memorial.

It is said that Pope planted his celebrated weeping willow at Twickenham
with his own hands, and that it was the first of its particular species
introduced into England. Happening to be with Lady Suffolk when she
received a parcel from Spain, he observed that it was bound with green
twigs which looked as if they might vegetate. "Perhaps," said he, "these
may produce something that we have not yet in England." He tried a
cutting, and it succeeded. The tree was removed by some person as
barbarous as the reverend gentleman who cut down Shakespeare's Mulberry
Tree. The Willow was destroyed for the same reason, as the Mulberry
Tree--because the owner was annoyed at persons asking to see it. The
Weeping Willow

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,[013]

has had its interest with people in general much increased by its
association with the history of Napoleon in the Island of St. Helena.
The tree whose boughs seemed to hang so fondly over his remains has now
its scions in all parts of the world. Few travellers visited the tomb
without taking a small cutting of the Napoleon Willow for cultivation in
their own land. Slips of the Willow at Twickenham, like those of the
Willow at St. Helena, have also found their way into many countries. In
1789 the Empress of Russia had some of them planted in her garden at St.
Petersburgh.

Mr. Loudon tells us that there is an old _oak_ in Binfield Wood, Windsor
Forest, which is called _Pope's Oak_, and which bears the inscription
"HERE POPE SANG:"[014] but according to general tradition it was a
_beech_ tree, under which Pope wrote his "Windsor Forest." It is said
that as that tree was decayed, Lady Gower had the inscription alluded to
carved upon another tree near it. Perhaps the substituted tree was an
oak.

I may here mention that in the Vale of Avoca there is a tree celebrated
as that under which Thomas Moore wrote the verses entitled "The meeting
of the Waters."

The allusion to _Pope's Oak_ reminds me that Chaucer is said to have
planted three oak trees in Donnington Park near Newbury. Not one of them
is now, I believe, in existence. There is an oak tree in Windsor Forest
above 1000 years old. In the hollow of this tree twenty people might be
accommodated with standing room. It is called _King's Oak_: it was
William the Conqueror's