It is now closely planted with beeches, none of great size, and extends to a tangled thicket of fieldpines and cedar and sassafras and blackberry bushes, which again masks a drop of some ten feet to the river.

Fir-trees are there with their cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts; there stand the stools of oak and yew trees, beeches and alders.

The result was, that when at last it slipped into the cool shade of a row of beeches at its base, its victim was as exhausted as itself.

The trees were in their full autumnal splendor: maples, crimson, scarlet, and yellow; chestnuts, pale green and yellow; beeches, shining golden brown; and sumacs in fiery spikes, brighter than all the rest.

Squirrels there were, dashing across the open glades and running up the smooth beeches and chestnut trees, as quick as light, and rabbits, dodging in and out amongst the ferns, and just showing the snow-white patch under their little tails as they disappeared, and now and again the lordly deer stepping daintily and leisurely through the deep fern; all these lived in the wonderful depths of Craythew Park, and of birds there was no end.

King Haakon is no stranger to the queer old palace among the beeches at Fredensborg, where every summer King Christian gathered together his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren from the courts of England, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Greece; and where conversations took place which, if reported, would vitally interest the whole round world.

From the saloon the crowd moved up towards the big spring at the foot of Imboden Hill, where, under beautiful trunk-mottled beeches, was built the speakers' platform.

Up at the big spring under the beeches sat the disgusted orator of the day and the disgusted Senator, who, seriously, was quite sure that the Guard, being composed of Democrats, had taken this way to shatter his campaign.

I entered them at once, and after a semicircular turn through the pleasant paths, amid live-oaks, water-oaks, red oaks, chestnut oaks, magnolias, beeches, hickories, hornbeams, sweet gums, sweet bays, and long-leaved and short-leaved pines, came out into the road again a quarter of a mile farther up the hill.

Then he caught sight of a little, young beech-tree that had shot up as slender as a rod, that it might soon reach the free air above the canopy of branches which the old beeches spread above it.

Now it was quiet for a moment under the beeches.

Beeches and chestnut and walnut trees thrive down here; and they grow so big that they tower above the church-roofs.

The landmark of the low hills and the beeches up to which the property was saved (IX.8) seems to be the limits of Mantua's boundaries, not of Vergil's estates on the low river-plains.

In all the Cotswold villages and small towns the "big house" stands out conspicuously among the old cottages and barns and farmhouses, half hidden as it is by the dense foliage of giant elms and beeches and chestnuts and ash; nor is Burford Priory an exception to the rule, though its grounds are guarded by a wall of immense height on one side.

The elm leaves are rough to the touch, like sandpaper, and their edges are clearly serrated; those of the beeches are smooth as parchment, and though the edges appear at first sight to be almost clean cut, they have very slight serrations, as if nature had rounded them with a blunt knife.

Ere the leaf is off the ash and the beeches are tinged with russet and gold, flocks of these handsome birds leave their homes in the ice-bound north, and fly southwards to England and the sunny shores of France.

Then, as the rustling wind spoke in the lifeless leaves of the beeches, the plain seemed to be peopled with strange phantasiesthe ghosts of the heroes of old.

Up a long stately avenue of elms and beeches, with bracken and ferns covering mossy glades in the distance, and then Roy and Dudley flung themselves off their ponies before an old stone house with ivy-covered walls and turrets.

The truth is, sir, that people comme il faut cannot well submit to the total change of society and manners implied in a removal from Whitehall or Mayfair to some absurd old antediluvian chateau, sir, boxed up among beeches and rooks.

There is plenty of fine timber on the grounds, beeches, and great silver firs and, especially to be named, ancient larches with knees and elbows like old oaks, given to the proprietor by George II., when the larch was first introduced into Scotland.

" With the exception of Knole Park, Holwood boasts some of the finest beeches in the country.

The special points of Epping Forest which should be included in a long day's ramble are Connaught Water, a lake near Chingford; High Beach, an elevated portion of the forest possessing some splendid beeches; the earthwork known as Loughton Camp, which probably belongs to pre-Roman times, and Ambresbury Banks, towards Epping.

[Illustration: A GLADE AMONG THE BEECHES IN EPPING FOREST.

I'm coming, I'm coming, The children shall love me; The beeches, the willows, The golden elm trees That close by the village Are drooping above me, Shall float on my billows Their last withered leaves.

Beside the Catholic chapel of Fair-Beeches she pauses to listen to the mass; but farther down the valley becomes an apostate, and attends the Lutheran service in the Husemer church.