From the entrance into this unnatural war, his natural cheerfulness and vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of spirits stole upon him which he had never been used to: yet, being one of those who believed that one battle would end all differences, and that there would be so great a victory on one side, that the other would be compelled to submit to any conditions from the victor, (which supposition and conclusion generally sunk into the minds of most men, and prevented the looking after many advantages that might then have been laid hold of,) he resisted those indispositions. But after the furious resolution of the two Houses not to admit any treaty for peace, those indispositions, which had before touched him, grew into a perfect habit of uncheerfulness; and he, who had been so exactly easy and affable to all men that his face and countenance was always present and vacant to his company, and held any cloudiness, and less pleasantness of the visage, a kind of rudeness of incivility, became, on a sudden, less communicable; and thence, very sad, pale, and exceedingly affected with the spleen. In his clothes and habit, which he had minded before always with more neatness, and industry, and expense, than is usual to so great a soul, he was not now only incurious but too negligent and in his reception of suitors, and the necessary, or casual addresses to his place, so quick, and sharp, and severe, that there wanted not some men (strangers to his nature and disposition) who believed him proud and imperious; from which no mortal man was ever more free.

When there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press any, thing which he thought might promote it; and sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill and sad accent, ingeminate the word peace, peace; and would passionately profess, "that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart." This made some think, or pretend to think, "that he was so much enamoured on peace, that he would have been

glad the king should have bought it at any price; which was a most unreasonable calumny. As if a man that was himself the most punctual and precise in every circumstance that might reflect on conscience or honour, could have wished the king to have committed a trespass against either. And yet this senseless scandal made some impression upon him, or at least he used it for an excuse of the daringness of his spirit: for at the leaguer before Gloucester, when his friend passionately reprehended him for exposing his person unnecessarily to danger, (for he delighted to visit the trenches, and nearest approaches, and to discover what the enemy did,) as being so much beside the duty of his place, that it might be understood rather to be against it, he would say merrily, "that his office could not take away the privilege of his age; and that a secretary in war might be present at the greatest secret in danger;" but withal, alleged seriously, "that it concerned him to be more active in enterprises of hazard than other men; that all might see that his impatiency for peace proceeded not from pusillanimity, or fear to adventure his own person."

In the morning before the battle, as always upon action, he was very cheerful, and put himself in the first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment, then advancing upon the enemy, who had lined the hedges on both sides with musketeers: from whence he was shot with a musket in the lower part of the belly: and in the instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till the next morning; till when there was some hope that he might have been a prisoner; though his nearest friends, who knew his disposition, received small comfort from that imagination. Thus fell that incomparable young man, in the four and thirtieth year of his age; having so much despatched the true business of life, that the eldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more innocency: whosoever leads such a life needs be the less anxious upon how short warning it is taken from him.

Trees.

TREES-so beautiful in their individual attributes, so magnificent in their forest groups-are amongst the most lovely and glorious of the materials which Nature spreads before the poets. Spenser makes his Catalogue of Trees full of picturesque association, by his wonderful choice of epithets :

And forth they pass with pleasure, forward led,
Joying to hear the birds' sweet harmony,

Which, therein shrouded from the tempest's dread,
Seemed in their song to scorn the cruel sky;
Much can they praise the trees so straight and high,
The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall,
The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry,
The builder-oak, sole king of forests all;
The aspen good for staves; the cypress, funeral.

The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors
And poets sage; the fir that weepeth still,
The willow, worn of forlorn paramours,
The yew, obedient to the bender's will,
The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill,
The myrrh sweet bleeding of the bitter wound,
The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill,

The fruitful olive, and the plantane round,

The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound. SPENSER

Scott associates the "forest fair" with the feudal grandeur of hunt and falconry:

The scenes are desert now, and bare,
Where flourish'd once a forest fair,
When these waste glens with copse
were lined,

And peopled with the hart and hind.
Yon thorn-perchance whose prickly

spears

Yon lonely thorn would he could tell
The changes of his parent dell,
Since he, so gray and stubborn now,
Waved in each breeze a sapling
bough:

Would he could tell how deep the
shade,

Have fenced him for three hundred
years,
While fell around his green compeers How clung the rowan to the rock,

A thousand mingled branches made;
How broad the shadows of the oak,

And through the foliage show'd his
head,

With narrow leaves and berries red;
What pines on every mountain sprung,
D'er every dell what birches hung,
In every breeze what aspens shook,
What alders shaded every brook!
"Here in my shade," methinks he'd
say,

"The mighty stag at noontide lay:
The wolf I've seen, a fiercer game,
(The neighbouring dingle bears his
name,)

With lurching step around me prowl,
And stop against the moon to howl;
The mountain-boar, on battle set,
His tusks upon my stem would whet;
While doe and roe, and red-deer good,
Have bounded by through gay green-
wood.

Then oft from Newark's riven tower,
Sallied a Scottish monarch's power:

A thousand vassals muster'd round,
With horse, and hawk, and horn, and
hound;

And I might see the youth intent
Guard every pass with cross-bow bent,
And through the brake the rangers
stalk,

And falc'ners hold the ready hawk;
And foresters in greenwood trim,
Lead in the leash the gaze-hounds
grim,

Attentive, as the bratchet's bay
From the dark covert drove the prey,
To slip them as he broke away.
The startled quarry bounds amain,
As fast the gallant greyhounds strain :
Whistles the arrow from the bow,
Answers the arquebuss below;
While all the rocking hills reply
To hoof-clang, hound, and hunter's
cry,

And bugles ringing lightsomely."

SCOTT

Keats makes the "leafy month of June" fresher and greener, with remem brances of the "Sherwood clan "--the No! those days are gone away, And their hours are old and gray, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden fall Of the leaves of many years: Many times have winter's shears, Frozen north, and chilling east, Sounded tempests to the feast Of the forest's whispering fleeces, Since men knew not rents nor leases.

woodland heroes of the people's ballads

No, the bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill;
Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone echo gives the half
To some wight amazed to hear
Jesting deep in forest drear.

On the fairest time of June
You may go with sun or moon,
Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may behold
Little John, or Robin bold;
Never one of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair hostess Merriment,
Down beside the pasture Trent;
For he left the merry tale,
Messenger for spicy ale.

All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his tufted grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest days,
She would weep, and he would craze: Can't be got without hard money!

He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her--strange that honey

KEATS.

A living writer dwells upon the solemn stillness of the forest, with a poet's love built upon knowledge. No one can understand that peculiar stillness who has not passed many a thoughtful hour beneath the " 'melancholy boughs,” amidst which there is ever sound which seems like silence ::

I love the forest; I could dwell among
That silent people, till my thoughts up grew
In nobly ordered form, as to my view
Rose the succession of that lofty throng:-
The mellow footstep on a ground of leaves
Form'd by the slow decay of num'rous years,-
The couch of moss, whose growth alone appears,
Beneath the fir's inhospitable eaves,-

The chirp and flutter of some single bird,
The rustle in the brake,-what precious store
Of joys have these on poets' hearts conferr❜d?
And then at times to send one's own voice out,
In the full frolic of one startling shout,

Only to feel the after stillness more!

MILNES.

The American poet's reverence for the forest rises into devotion:

Father, thy hand

Hath rear'd these venerable columns, thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and forthwith rose

All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun
Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze,
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,