to its advantage, with the royal canopy in the beautiful lines in 3 Henry VI., II. v. 42 : Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To kings that fear their subjects' treachery? Even in the winter, when leaves and fruit alike have gone, the poet notes it : Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind. King Lear, III. iv. 48. Its thorns are possibly referred to (MidsummerNight's Dream, III. i. 61 and V. i. 136) under the term "bush-of-thorn," and possibly in Romeo and Juliet, I. iv. 25. The thorn has a wide geographical range; it is found throughout Europe and in North Africa, and as far into Asia as the confines of India. In the English hedges there are several well-marked varieties, viz., oxyacanthoides, laciniata, kyrtostyla, and monogyna ; and many beautiful forms, with double, single, and coloured flowers, adorn our gardens. In the hedgerows there also grows the elder (Sambucus nigra, L.), a tree with strong scent, found throughout Europe to Northern Africa, and which tradition has assigned-no doubt from its brittle nature-as the tree on which the arch-traitor, Judas, hanged himself, as in Love's Labour's Lost, V. ii. 608, where Holofernes plays on the word with Biron : Hol. Begin, sir; you are my elder. Biron. Well followed: Judas was hanged on an elder. Sir John Mandeville was shown the identical tree in Jerusalem. He says: 66 And faste by is zit, the Tree of Eldre that Judas henge himsilf upon, for despeyr that he hadde, when he solde and betrayed oure Lorde.” The elder had, however, many admirers, despite its ill fame, while its scented flowers are used to-day to soften hard water, for the complexion, and for perfumes, while from its fruit wine is largely manufactured. One of Alexis of Piedmont's recipes may be given as a specimen of the repute it was held in by the Elizabethan herbalists: "For to make a cleere voyce ye shall take the floures of an elder tree, and drye them in the sunne, but take heede they take no moysture or wet, then make pouder of them, and drinke of it with white wine every mornyng fasting" (Alexis, ii. 17). The hard external wood, the large space occupied by the soft pith, are noticed by the poet in the jeering, taunting speech of the Host (Merry Wives, II. iii. 29): What says Esculapius? my Galen? my heart of elder? And its boyish use as a suitable material for popguns is not forgotten, either: That's a perilous shot out of an elder gun. And, lastly, its strong scent: Henry V., IV. i. 209. And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine Cymbeline, IV. ii. 59. Turning from our English trees, let us survey the stateliest of the old-world pines-the cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libanus), the impersonation of majesty and grandeur. Ellacombe doubts if Shakespeare ever saw the tree, as it is not supposed to have been introduced until it was planted at Bretby Park, in Derbyshire, in 1676; but it is worth mention that there is a tradition, but wholly unsupported by any evidence, that the famous cedars of Warwick Castle (see plate), so cruelly destroyed in the gale of March 25, 1895, were planted there by the Crusaders. How well the words apply! Let the mutinous winds Coriolanus, V. iii. 59. And by the spurs plucked up The pine and cedar. Tempest, V. i. 47. Many of the passages in which the poet names the cedar are very grand. Unfortunately, we have not here room for all; but they will be found in their proper sequence by-and-by. One or two deserve special attention : But I was born so high, And dallies with the wind and scorns the sun. Richard III., I. iii. 265. The cedar stoops not to the base shrub's foot, And lastly: Lucrece, 664. He shall flourish, And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches Henry VIII., V. v. 253. From our Eastern tree we turn to another garden ornament, a stately flower with elegant drooping bells of red or gold-the crown imperial, native of Persia, Afghanistan, and Cashmere (the Fritillaria imperialis, L.). As old Parkinson says, "it deserveth the first place in this our garden of delight," and none the less for its pretty legend. |