It is

the best things I have known in the world have been the sunshine and the warm weather. very hard to be poor, and old, and cold. Cold, as far as I know, is the worst of all-worse than hunger; at least I've found it so. And if it were not for the cold, I don't think I'd go to the Union at all, but would try and jog along in the winter as I do in the summer."

Poor Tom, it will be seen, though he has a certain amount of pride, has not a very high spirit ;how could he have with such a hopeless battle to fight?-and by no means despises the workhouse, or thinks it derogatory to his manly dignity as some of the hard-working poor do, to depend upon it for assistance. Without its kindly hand, however, he would doubtless die in the cold December of serum on the brain," as the parish doctors have lately taken it into their heads to call starvation. So small blame be to him for going into it when he must, and for coming out of it when he can. In spite of his last fit of despondency, I hope to see the old fellow out again in the spring, along with his favourite primroses, listening to the cuckoo, gathering cresses, and drawing such comfort out of the sunshine as Diogenes may have done, but without the misanthropy, that perhaps was not real, even in Diogenes.

G

O people in the world take such intellectual pleasure in trees as those of the British islands. The squirearchy and aristocracy, in their beautiful countryhouses, find about as much enjoyment in their ancestral oaks and over-arching avenues of elm, lime, beech, and chesnut, as they do in the picture galleries and libraries, or the heirlooms of their race. The overthrow by storm, or natural decay of an ancient and picturesque tree, in their domain, afflicts them more than the loss of a favourite horse, and almost as much as that of a member of the family. None but the veriest scapegrace and spendthrift, unless reduced to the direst extremity of pecuniary misfortune, will sell his ornamental timber without a struggle. The class immediately below them, who are proprietors of no paternal acres, and who pass their long and useful lives in striving to amass fortunes, perhaps

to build up a county family, if their ambition points that way, as it often does, have in the intervals when even the busiest and most plodding of men must unbend, delightful visions of a coming time, when in the evening of their days, they too may sit under the shadow of their own vines or figtrees, "with none to make them afraid." Perchance on a holiday visit to the country, they may stand at the lodge-gate of some patrician mansion, and, looking wistfully up the shady avenue, exclaim, like the wanderer in the Pleasures of Hope, "Oh, that for me some home like this would smile!" Descending yet another step in the social ladder, the clerk, the shopkeeper, and the mechanic, escaping from the smoke and moil of the over-populous city, where their daily lives are spent, rush to the green fields and the shady trees; with an appetite sharpened by months, or it may sometimes happen of years of enforced abstinence from all enjoyment of the manifold beauties of the country. The French have a great love of flowers, but not that passionate admiration for trees which is a part of our British idiosyncracy. The Americans have not yet arrived at that point in social history, when antiquity, whether it be in the shape of a tree or an edifice, claims respect or admiration, and find the soil of their fertile continent, too greatly encumbered with trees that are neither useful nor ornamental, to be justified in allowing

forests to occupy the space that ought to be devoted to corn-fields. The tastes and habits, no less than the democratic principles of the people, do not, and are not likely to lead to the growth and establishment of great rural and aristocratic families among them, and such luxury as wealth commands finds among the Americans its field of display in the city rather than in the country. I once invited a distinguished American, on a visit to London, to dine at the Star and Garter, at Richmond, and, as a matter of course, directed his attention to the beautiful natural panorama that is visible from the terrace. Accustomed to admire the sylvan loveliness and umbrageous verdure of the scene, with the clear Thames flowing through the landscape like a thread of gold over a tissue of green velvet, I expected that the American, as a man of taste, would sympathise in my feelings. "Yes," said the American; "it is 'handsome' enough, but it seems to me that it sadly wants clearing!".

The English were always lovers of trees. Without going back to the time of the Druids to prove the fact, or to the entries in Doomsday Book to corroborate it; but coming down to the later days of Chaucer, Spenser, and our ballad literature, there are found such frequent and joyous allusions to the merry green wood," in all these early singers, as to make it evident that a life in the forest was

one which had peculiar charms in the imagination of the people. The opening stanza of the old ballad of Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne

When shawes are sheen and straddes full faire,

And leaves both large and long, 'Tis merry walking in faire forest,

To hear the sweet birds' song

expresses the popular sympathy with the sights and sounds of Nature, which is one of the healthiest components of the English character.

The long and sanguinary civil wars of the Red and White Roses, that ruined so many of the foremost English nobles and put new men in their places, who did not value the ancestral trees, except for what they would fetch as timber; the dispossession of the monks from their cosy monasteries by Henry VIII.; and the new series of commotions, wars, and revolutions that began under Charles I., and only ended with the flight of James II., produced disastrous effects, not only upon the ornamental trees that are the delight of the landed aristocracy, but upon all the woodland districts and forests of England. On the restoration of Charles II., when men's minds had calmed down, after the long perturbation of civil strife, and people had leisure to bestow their attention upon the minor matters that had been neglected when the state itself was in danger, it became a com