g 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.

My trees are young enough, and if they do not take me away into the
past, they project me into the future. When I planted them, I knew I
was performing an act, the issues of which would outlast me long. My
oaks are but saplings; but what undreamed-of English kings will they
not outlive! I pluck my apples, my pears, my plums; and I know that
from the same branches other hands will pluck apples, pears, and plums
when this body of mine will have shrunk into a pinch of dust. I cannot
dream with what year these hands will date their lette