We were informed, however, that the cedar
trees at Wilton had only been planted in the year 1640 by the Earl of
Devonshire, who had sent men to collect them at Lebanon in the Holy
Land. Thus we were compelled to change our opinion, for the trees we had
seen elsewhere were of about the same girth as those at Wilton, and must
therefore have been planted at about the same period. The oak trees in
the park still retained many of their leaves, although it was now late
in the autumn, but they were falling off, and we tried to catch some of
them as they fell, though we were not altogether successful. My brother
reminded me of a verse he once wrote as an exercise in calligraphy when
at school:
Men are like leaves that on the trees do grow,
In Summer's prosperous time much love they show,
But art thou in adversity, then they
Like leaves from trees in Autumn fall away.
But after autumn and winter have done their worst there are still some
bushes, plants, or trees that retain their leaves to cheer the traveller
on his way. Buckingham, who was beheaded at Salisbury, was at one time a
fugitive, and hid himself in a hole near the top of a precipitous rock,
now covered over with bushes and known only to the initiated as
"Buckingham's Cave.
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