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In the midst of the company stood the pair, distinguished from

all the rest of the forest throng by gracefulness of form and

charm of colour; the white birch, the beloved, with her husband

the hornbeam. But farther off, like grave elders sitting in

silence and gazing on their children and grandchildren, stood on

this side hoary beeches, and on that matronly poplars; and an

oak, bearded with moss, and bearing on its humped back the weight

of five centuries, supported itself-as on the broken pillars of

sepulchres-on the petrified corpses of other oaks, its ancestors.