Valleys and cultivated fields, have each their characteristics of richness or of loveliness, but they have no beauty in comparison with that of woodland scenery. The wild thyme and moss, the short-cropped herbage, the tufts of fern and golden-blossomed gorse, that vary the ground on which we tread; the solemn depth of the lone forest, the noble groups of trees that diversify the open spaces, and the clear streams that flow silently through the deep soil, bordered with cowslips and wild marigolds, have all, and each, their own peculiar attractions. Who has not been sensible when passing among them of an hilarity of feeling, a delight, which he has experienced nowhere else, which carries him onward from one spot to another, now in the midst of trees, and now again in the open space, as if he could never weary? Then, the sweet fresh breezes of the spring, how pure they are, sporting over the green herbage or among the trees. They are not infected with sighs of human sorrow; they have not passed beside the couch of dying men, or through the throng of a great city. They are sporting now as they sported a thousand years ago, among the branches of some of the old trees, which still remain, relics of bygone days, memorials of what has been. Those breezes are still the same, for the circumambient fluid, which gives hilarity and freshness to everything that lives and moves on the surface of the earth, is not subjected to the unalterable law which seems impressed on all beside. Earthly things grow old, or assume some new character. Even the kindred element of water evaporates, and is replenished by means of rain or dew; the soil is blown away in dust, and renewed again by the decay of vegetables. Men cease from off the earth; in one day their thoughts perish; cities which they have erected, noble structures, destined to last for ages, crumble silently, or else are overthrown by war or earthquakes; but the air, though ever moving, neither evaporates, nor is susceptible of change. Thus, then, whether in the character of a whirlwind, or of zephyr; whether as a breeze of spring, or tempest from the north, has it raged or sported in the branches of the stately tree, which stands among its brethren of the forest, resembling a noble column, surrounded by crowding houses. It is termed the Duke’s Walking-Stick, but the hand that would essay to move the shaft from out the place where it has stood for ages, must be gifted with a power and a spell, which even the wildest fancy has never yet assigned to any being of mortal mould; not even to those giants of fierce bearing, with whom she loves to people her land of fiction. The column stands alone, its smooth trunk is branchless to a giddy height, and its topmost boughs are higher than the roof of Westminster Abbey at its loftiest elevation. A tree, with which the branches of no other tree can mingle, solitary in the midst of its sylvan brotherhood, having no communion in its stateliness, either with the oak, over which long ages have passed, or with the sapling of yesterday. Thoughts of home and kindred are blended with that other tree, to which the lovers of forest scenery make a pilgrimage—the seven Sisters, for such is the name of a contiguous tree, with several columns, which, upspringing from the same root, are seen to mingle their leaves and branches. The bird which confides her nest in spring to the sheltering boughs of the one, teaches her young to nestle among the opening leaves of the other; so closely are they entwined, that a squirrel would find it difficult to make his way between them. We know not why the cognomen which distinguishes this favourite tree was given, or the period of its greatest perfection, whether it arose from out the earth in Saxon or Norman times, or whether seven ladies of a Ducal family, sisters in birth and love, gave that fond name to the noble tree, because of its interwoven stems.