his Majesty's Dominions' might appear to promise dry entertainment; but he who opens the volume is led on insensibly from page to page, and catches something of the delight which made the author enter with his whole heart and all his faculties into the subject. Mr. Shandy might have instanced the author in his chapter of names, -Avelan, he tells us, it was written in old deeds, and Avelan (Avellana) was then the name of the hasel. Dendrology was to him an object of unwearied curiosity and interest; he was continually adding to his store of facts and observations in this his favourite pursuit; and thinking with Erasmus, that ut homines, ita libros, indies seipsis meliores fieri oportet, he laboured till the end of his long life in perfecting his great work. He speaks of his 'too great affection and application to it,' when he was in the eighty-fourth year of his age. But by this constant care he made it perfect, according to the knowledge of that age. It is a great repository of all that was then known concerning the forest trees of Great Britain, their growth and culture, and their uses and qualities real or imaginary; and he has enlivened it with all the pertinent facts and anecdotes which occurred to him in his reading.

In the work there are necessarily some errors of both kinds, scientific as well as popular; there are likewise many curious things, and some useful ones which have ceased to be generally known. The planter may still remember with profit the woodman's proverb respecting the hardiest trees, Set them at Allhallowtide and command them to prosper: set them at Candlemas and intreat them to grow.' In opposition to Bacon, who recommends ship timber grown in moist ground, as the toughest and least subject to rift, Evelyn adheres to the more probable opinion of Pliny, (an opinion as old as the age of Homer), that though the low lands produce the stateliest trees, the strongest timber is grown in drier and more exposed situations. He observes that pollard oaks bear their leaves green through the winter more frequently than such as have not been mutilated,—a fact analogous to the increased bulk and muscular strength of those persons who have lost both their legs. Cups were formerly made from the roots of the oak; the roots of all trees for their beautiful veining being peculiarly fitted for the cabinet-maker and the turner's use. Cup and bowl are words which carry with them their own history. -The bowl was a tree-cup, the oldest of the family in countries where there were neither gourds nor cocoa nuts; the cup was a more savage invention, (cup, kopf, caput, xɛqɑλŋ,) with which our Scandinavian ancestors anticipated one of the enjoyments of Valhalla, drinking mead and ale out of the skulls of their enemies, while they listened to the music of a shin bone (tibia), the original pipe.-Evelyn was willing to believe any thing which did honour

to

to the oak. Its twigs, he says, twisted together, dipt in wort, well dried, and then kept in barley straw, by being steeped in wort at any future time will cause it to ferment and procure yeast :-but the properties of the oak have nothing to do with this, and the bundle, whatever it is, (a furze bush is commonly used in those countries where the practice is known) must be dipt in the fermenting and yesty liquor:-it is a mode of preserving yest dry. The leaves of oaks, he says, abundantly congested on snow preserves it as well as a deep pit or the most artificial refrigeratory.' In its acorns, its leaves, its mosses, its agaric, its may-dew, he finds sovereign virtues for many diseases, to say nothing of the viscus's, polypods and other exerescences of which innumerable remedies are composed, noble antidotes, syrups, &c.'- Nay, 'tis reported, that the very shade of this tree is so wholesome, that the sleeping, or lying under it becomes a present remedy to paralytics.'

Though the oak, as being the king of the English forest, is his favourite tree, he finds utility as well as beauty in trees of every kind. The loppings and leaves of the elm, he says, dried in the sun, prove a great relief to cattle when fodder is dear, and will be preferred to oats by the cattle: the Herefordshire people in his time gathered them in sacks for this purpose, and for their swine. Beech leaves gathered about the fall, and somewhat before they are much frost-bitten, afford the best and easiest mattresses in the world to lay under our quilts instead of straw.' This he learnt in Dauphiny and Switzerland, where he had slept on them to his great refreshment; but in another place he tells us that the French call these leafy beds for the crackling noise they make when one turns upon them, licts de parliament. The keys of the ash when young and tender make a delicate pickle; its bark is the best for tanning nets; its wood for drying herrings, and for burning in a lady's chamber, being one of those which yield no smoke. The chesnut was very generally used in old houses, London was chiefly built with it; if there be any European tree finer than the oak it is this. Cæsar is said to have introduced it from Sardis into Italy, and in so doing made for his country an acquisition more durable than all his conquests. But it is more certain that they came from `Asia Minor than that Cæsar brought them: boiled chesnuts would not have been the food of Virgil's shepherds, if the tree had so recently been imported. The horse chesnut is also from the Levant.-Evelyn gives the origin of its name, so called for the cure of horses broken-winded, and other cattle of coughs.' From the walnut tree he recommends a wine made from its sap, its green husk dried, or the first peeping red buds and leaves reduced to powder,' as a condiment instead of pepper; and the fungous substances which separate the lobes of the kernel to be pulverized

VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVII.

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and taken in wine as a remedy for dysentery: our army in Ireland, he says, were healed by this remedy, when no other would avail. It is strange that a tree which is at once so beautiful and so valuable, both for its fruit and its wood, should not be much more common than it is in England. Evelyn says it is thought useful in corn fields by keeping the grounds warm, and that its roots do not impede the plough. That trees are not so prejudicial to the field in which or around which they grow, as is supposed in England, is proved by the practices of those countries where the people are much better and more economical agriculturists. It appears that in his age maple sugar had been constantly sent for many years from Canada to Rouen to be refined; this must have been before the Dutch from Pernambuco taught the French how to manage the cape in their sugar-islands. The sap of the sycamore makes a wine like the birch, and may also be used in brewing with such advantage that one bushel of malt makes as good ale with sycamore sap, as four bushels with water.

In praising the lime as better than all other trees for the carver's use, he observes that it was used in all the work of our Lysippus, Mr. Gibbons,' and adds 'having had the honour, for so I account it, to be the first who recommended this great artist to his Majesty, Charles II., I mention it on this occasion, with much satisfaction. His meeting with this admirable artist is thus noticed in the Diary.

This day I first acquainted his Maty with that incomparable young man, Gibbon, whom I had lately met with in an obscure place by meer accident as I was walking neere a poore solitary thatched house, in a field in our parish, nere Says Court. I found him shut in, but looking in at the window I perceiv'd him carving that large cartoon or crucifix of Tintoret, a copy of which I had myselfe brought from Venice, where the original painting remaines. I asked if I might enter; he open'd the door civilly to me, and I saw him about such a work as for ye curiosity of handling, drawing, and studious exactnesse, I never had before seene in all my travells. I questioned him why he worked in such an obscure and lonesome place; he told me it was that he might apply himselfe to his profession without interruption, and wondred not a little how I had found him out. I asked if he was unwilling to be made knowne to some greate man, for that I believed it might turn to his profit; he answer'd he was yet but a beginner, but would not be sorry to sell off that peice; on demanding the price, he said £100. In good earnest the very frame was worth the money, there being nothing in nature so tender and delicate as the flowers and festoons about it, and yet the worke was very strong; in the piece were more than 100 figures of men, &c. I found he was likewise musical, and very civil, sober, and discreete in his discourse. There was onely an old woman in the house. So desiring leave to visite him sometimes I went away.

'Of this young artist, and the manner of finding him out, I acquainted

the

the King, and begg'd that he would give me leave to bring him and his worke to Whitehall, for that I would adventure my reputation with his Maty that he had never seene any thing approch it, and that he would be exceedingly pleased, and employ him. The King said he would himselfe go see him. This was the first notice he had of Mr. Gibbon.' -vol. i. p. 410.

Gibbons should have made a pulpit for St. Pauls, his genius would then have had full scope for displaying itself, and we should have had something which might have vied with the magnificent works of this kind in the Low Countries. He was a very illiterate man, as appears by one of his notes inserted in these volumes, in the worst possible spelling.

6

an

The poplar burns untowardly, and rather moulders away than maintains any solid heat.' Should it not then be preferred for the floors of dwelling houses, so long as we persist in the preposterous custom of constructing houses which may serve for funeral piles? The Lombardy poplar we have heard commended for farm houses, and especially for cheese-rooms, because neither mice nor mites will attack it. The aspin, says Mr. Evelyn, differs from other poplars in this that he takes it ill to have his head cut off.' Ale brewed with the ripe berries of the mountain ash is praised as incomparable drink familiar in Wales. Of the shortest part of the old wood, found commonly in doating* birches, is made the grounds of our effeminate farined gallants sweet powder; and of the quite consumed and rotten, (such as we find reduced to a kind of reddish earth, in superannuated hollow trees,) is gotten the best mould for the raising of divers seedlings of the rarest plants and flowers.' He recommends a more curious use for the down of the willow, saying, he is of opinion, if it were dried with care that it might be fit for cushions and pillows of chastity, for such of old was the reputation of the shade of those trees. Their shade was thought so wholesome, that physicians, in his time, prescribed it to feverish persons, permitting the boughs to be placed even about their beds, as a safe and comfortable refrigeration.' The ivy, he may with small industry be made a beautiful standard,-a beautiful one indeed! Some of the American creepers which have become so, remain erect after the tree which they have clipt and killed has mouldered within their convolutions. Bacon, he thinks, introduced the plane; Archbishop Grindal the tamaric: Evelyn himself obtained seeds of the cedars from Lebanon, and had the honour to be the first who brought the alaternus into use and reputation in this kingdom, for the most beautiful of hedges and verdure in the

says,

* This word, as Evelyn uses it here and in other places, seems to be synonymous with dottard, doddered, decayed, or going to decay. It is still applied to those persons whose intellects fail them in extreme old age.

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world, (the swiftness of the growth considered,) and propagated it from Cornwall even to Cumberland.' But he names the yew for hedges, as preferable for beauty and a stiff defence to any other plant; and says, 'without vanity,' he was the first which brought it into fashion, as well for defence as for a succedaneum to cypress, whether in hedges or pyramids, conic-spires, bowls or what other shapes, adorning the parks or larger avenues with their lofty tops, thirty foot high, and braving all the efforts of the most rigid winter, which cypress cannot weather.

That fashion has passed away. It is to be wished that Evelyn had been equally successful in filling the country with fruit trees, according to his wise and benevolent desire. I do only wish,' he says, upon the prospect and meditation of the universal benefit, that every person whatsoever, with ten pounds per annum, within her Majesty's dominions, were by some indispensable statute obliged to plant his hedge-rows with the best and most useful kinds of them.' Old Gerrard had exprest a wish to the same effect before him, and he quotes the old man's honest and not ineloquent exhortation— 'forward in the name of God, graft, set, plant and nourish up. trees in every corner of your ground; the labour is small, the cost is nothing, the commodity is great; yourselves shall have plenty, the poor shall have somewhat in time of want to relieve their necessity, and God shall reward your good minds and diligence.' Surely the time will come when the walnut, the pear and the cherry will take place of those trees, which are of less utility and beauty while they stand, and not of greater value when they are cut down. If that spirit of wanton mischief or more malignant havoc be apprehended, which is now but too prevalent among the populace in many parts of England, it should be remembered that this spirit was once as prevalent in France, and that there is now no country in the world where so little of it is displayed. When the sides of the highways were first planted, under Sully's administration, Evelyn tells us, ‘the rude and mischievous peasants did so hack, steal and destroy what they had begun, that they were forced to desist from the thorough prosecution of the design; so as there is nothing more exposed, wild and less pleasant than the common roads of France, for want of shade, and the decent limits which these sweet and divertissant plantations would have afforded.' The peasant is now as sensible of the comfort which these road-side trees afford him by their shade in summer, and the security which they give him when the ground is covered with snow, as the foreigner is of their stateliness and beauty. Evelyn, whose love for trees and groves was only less than that which he felt for his fellow-creatures, more than once expresses his bitter indignation at the havoc made among them, owing to the barbarous manner in which Louis XIV. wasted

the