Germany, he asks in triumph, "Is there a
more ravishing or delightful object than to
behold some entire streets, and even whole
towns, planted with these trees in even lines
before the doors? This is extremely fresh,
of admirable effect against the epilepsy, for
which the delicately-scented blossoms are
held prevalent, and screen the houses both
from winds, sun, and dust, than which
there can be nothing more desirable where
streets are much frequented." The lime,
too, has its medicinal virtues. "The berries,
reduced to powder, cure dysentery, and
stop bleeding of the nose. The distilled
water of the same is good against epilepsy,
apoplexy, vertigo, palpitation of the heart,
and gravel, and I am told the juice of the
leaves fixes colours." To this may be
added what Evelyn does not seem to have
known, that the linden leaves, dried and
placed in the teapot, make a tea which is
highly sudorific. In Germany, the popular
and very certain cure for influenza, catarrh
and cold in the head, is to lie quietly in
bed for four-and-twenty hours, and drink
copiously of hot "Linden-thee." The same
remedy is used in France.

The chestnut, perhaps, during the short
season at the end of May and beginning of
June, the most beautiful of the trees that
adorn the English landscape, is the only
one of the good man's favourites which space
will allow us to notice. He is warm in
praise of its beauty as a growing tree and
of its uses as timber. He observed, he
says, "that this tree is so prevalent against
cold, that where they stand, they preserve
other trees from the injuries of the severest
frost. I am sure that, being planted in
hedgerows, and for avenues to our country
houses, they are a magnificent and a royal
ornament." In this opinion most
Londoners, who remember the glories of Bushey
Park in early summer, will cordially coincide.
Even the fruit, bitter as that of the
horse-chestnut is, finds favour in his
philosophic eyes. "We give," he says, "that
fruit to our swine in England which is
among the delicacies of princes in other
countries, and of better nourishment to
husbandmen than kohl (cabbage) and
rusty bacon, yea, or beans to boot. . . . .
The bread made of chestnut-flour is
exceedingly nutritive, and makes women well
complexioned, as I have read in a good
author." What may interest the ladies,
while golden locks are in fashion, is the
fact, which I give on Evelyn's authority,
that "a decoction of the rind of the chestnut-
tree tinctures hair of a golden colour.
This," he adds, without the gift of
prophecy to lead him to 1870, "is esteemed a
beauty in some countries."

Evelyn was justified in the pride which
he took in his Sylva, and in the additions
which he continued to make to it from
time to time, until nearly the close of his
life. In his dedication of the third edition
to Charles the Second, sixteen years after
its first publication, he says, with pardonable
self-appreciation, "I need not acquaint
your majesty how many millions of timber
trees (besides infinite others) have been
propagated and planted throughout your
vast dominions at the instigation and by
the sole direction of this work; because
your gracious majesty has been pleased to
own it publicly for my encouragement."

It is only within our own time that
Evelyn's far-sighted anxiety for the
continuous production of material for the
building of a great navy, to maintain British
power in all the seas of the world, has
become a matter with which the present
generation has no concern. Iron, not oak,
is now-a-days the monarch of the sea. None
the less, however, is Evelyn's glory or the
gratitude we owe him. For nearly two
hundred years his book did noble service
in the mode he designed; and in other
modes also. He taught the rural aristocracy
a duty they owed to themselves and their
country; and since his time they have well
performed it.

Sayes Court, where the amiable
philosopher so long lived and cultivated his
trees, his shrubs, and his salads—or, as he
calls them, "acetaria"—has long ceased
to be rural, and is mural as far as houses
and streets can make it so. Wotton,
however, still remains, and an Evelyn still
resides in it, to cultivate like grounds, and
maintain the fair fame of an honourable
family.

           TWO CASTLES.

I KNOW a castle, great and high,
That flaunts its turrets to the sky,
And covers, fairly measured round,
Three hundred roods of fertile ground.

And were that castle, (fate forefend!)
Burned to the earth, no stone on end,
Three years, and money, were it got,
Would build it up again, I wot!

But here a nobler castle stands,
Than e'er was reared by human hands,
A tall, wide-spreading beechen tree,
Whose bole is thirty feet and three.

And were this castle smitten low,
By fire, or flood, or woodman's blow,
Not all the strength of mortal men
Could ever build it up again.