habited. The king and his family lived in an ugly barrack-looking building called the Queen's Lodge, which stood opposite the south front of the castle. The great quadrangle, the terrace, and every part of the Home Park, was a free play-ground for the boys of Windsor. The path to Datchet passed immediately under the south terrace, direct from west to east, and it abruptly | descended into the lower park, at a place called Dodd's Hill. From this path several paths diverged in a south-easterly direction towards the dairy at Frogmore; and one of these went close by a little dell, in which long rank grass, and fern, and low thorns, grew in profusion. Near this dell stood several venerable oaks. Our earliest recollections associate this place with birds'-nests and mushrooms; but some five or six years later we came to look here for the “oak with great ragg'd horns,” to which we had been introduced in the newly-discovered world of Shakspere. There was an oak, whose upper branches were much decayed, standing some thirty or forty yards from the deep side of the dell; and there was another oak with fewer branches, whose top was also bare, standing in the line of the avenue near the park wall. We have heard each of these oaks called Herne's Oak; but the application of the name to the oak in the avenue is certainly more recent. That tree, as we first recollect it, had not its trunk bare: Its dimensions were comparatively small, and it seemed to us to have no pretensions to the honour which it occasionally received. The old people, however, used to say that Herne's Oak was cut down or blown down, and certainly our own impressions were that Herne's Oak was gone. One thing however consoled us. The little dell was assuredly the "pit hard by Herne's Oak" in which Anne Page and her troop of fairies "couched with obscured lights." And so we for ever associated this dell with Shakspere. Years passed on-Windsor ceased to be familiar to us. When Mr. Jesse, however, pub lished his second series of Gleanings in 1834, we were pleased to find this passage: "The most interesting tree, at Windsor, for there can be little doubt of its identity, is the celebrated Herne's Oak. There is indeed a story prevalent in the neighbourhood respecting its destruction. It was stated to have been felled by command of his late Majesty George III. about fifty years ago, under peculiar circumstances. The whole story, the details of which it is unnecessary to enter upon, appeared so improbable, that I have taken some pains to ascertain the inaccuracy of it, and have now every reason to believe that it is perfectly unfounded." Towards the end of 1838, the following passage in The Quarterly Review,' came to destroy the little hope which we had indulged that Mr. Jesse had restored to us Herne's Oak :— "Among his anecdotes of celebrated English oaks, we were surprised to find Mr. Loudon adopting (at least so we understand him) an apocryphal story about Herne's Oak, given in the lively pages of Mr. Jesse's Gleanings. That gentleman, if he had taken any trouble, might have ascertained that the tree in question was cut down one morning, by order of King George III., when in a state of great, but transient, excitement; the circumstance caused much regret and astonishment at the time, and was commented on in the newspapers. The oak which Mr. Jesse would decorate with Shaksperian honours stands at a considerable distance from the real Simon Pure. Every old woman in Windsor knows all about the facts." Mr. Jesse replied to this statement, in a letter addressed to the editor of the 'Times,' dated Nov. 28, 1838. Mr. Jesse says that the story thus given was often repeated by George IV., who, however, always added 'that tree was supposed to have been Herne's oak, but it was not.' Mr. Jesse adds, that the tree thus cut down, which stood near the castle, was an elm. The tree which Mr. Jesse describes as Herne's Oak, is pointed out in the following passage of his letter to the 'Times.' "King William III. was a great planter of avenues, and to him we are indebted for those in Hampton Court and Bushy Parks, and also those at Windsor. All these have been made in a straight line, with the exception of one in the Home Park, which diverges a little, so as to take in Herne's Oak as a part of the avenue-a proof, at least, that William III. preferred distorting his avenue to cutting down the tree in order to make way for it in a direct line, affording another instance of the care taken of this tree 150 years ago."; The engraving of the oak in the avenue of elms is a faithful delineation of the oak which Mr. Jesse calls Herne's. It is now perfectly bare down to the very roots. "In this state," says Mr. Jesse, "it has been, probably, long before the recollection of the oldest person living." He adds "it has always been protected by a strong fence round it." In our own recol lection this tree was unprotected by any fence, | under whose care he was placed in 1792. Mr. and its upper part only was withered and without bark. So far from Herne the hunter having blasted it, it appears to have suffered a premature decay. This tree is of small girth compared with other trees about it. It is not more than fifteen feet in circumference at the largest part, while there is a magnificent oak at about | 200 yards distance whose girth is nearly thirty feet. The engraving at the end of this notice is a representation of that beautiful tree. He The subject, since the publication of our first edition, has been investigated with great acute ness by the late Dr. Bromet; and his conclusions were given in a very interesting letter in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for April, 1841. collected a variety of testimony from living persons, which goes to prove that a tree called Herne's Oak was cut down more than sixty years ago, and that the tree which now pretends to the honour had acquired the name in very modern times:-"its present name was not conferred upon it until some time after the demolition of another old tree, formerly possessing that title." This entirely agrees with our own personal recollections of the talk of Windsor about Herne's Oak. But Dr. Bromet justly observes that the "strongest proof" against the claims of Mr. Jesse's oak is "Collier's map of 1742, which actually points out 'Sir John Falstaff's oak' as being, not in the present avenue, but outside it, near the edge of the pit." Mr. Collier "was a resident in the immediate vicinity of the tree he thus distinguishes;”—and his map is therefore an indisputable "record of its locality and character a hundred years ago." So far, we think, the proof is absolute that the oak in the avenue is not Herne's Oak. It was not as we believe so called by general tradition even in very recent times: it certainly was not so called in Collier's 'Plan of Windsor Little Park' in 1742, in which plan another tree, standing some yards away from the avenue, is remarkable enough to bear the name of Sir John Falstaff's Oak. Delamotte has often heard his master lament that Herne's Oak had been cut down, to the great annoyance, as Mr. West stated, of the King and the royal family. According to Mr. West's account of the circumstance, the King had directed all the trees in the park to be numbered; and upon the representation of the bailiff, whose name was Robinson, that certain trees encumbered the ground, directions were given to fell those trees, and Herne's Oak was amongst the condemned. Mr. West, who was residing at Windsor at the time, traced this oak to the spot where it was conveyed, and obtained a large piece of one of its knotty arms, which Mr. Delamotte has often seen. Mr. Ralph West, however, the eldest son of the President, who, as a youth, was distinguished for his love of art, and his great skill as a draftsman, made a drawing of this tree before it was felled, and Mr. Delamotte's drawing, which he kindly granted us permission to engrave, was a copy of this valuable sketch. The locality of the tree, as indicated by the position of the castle in this sketch, perfectly corresponds with the best traditions. We might here dismiss the subject, had we not been favoured with a communication, in accordance with the views which we have already taken. Mr. Nicholson, the eminent landscape draftsman, has furnished Mr. Crofton Croker, who has taken a kind interest in our work, with the following information: About the year 1800, he was on a visit to the Dowager Countess of Kingston, at Old Windsor; and his mornings were chiefly employed in sketching, or rather making studies of the old trees in the Forest. This circumstance one day led the conversation of some visitors to Lady Kingston to Herne's Oak. Mrs. Bonfoy and her daughter, Lady Ely, were present; and as they were very much with the royal family, Mr. Nicholson requested Lady Ely to procure for him any information that she could from the King, respecting Herne's Oak, which, considering his Majesty's tenacious memory and familiarity with Windsor, the King could pro The engraving of an oak at the head of Act V. is copied without alteration from a drawing made in the year 1800, by Mr. W. Dela-bably give better than any one else. motte, the Professor of Landscape Drawing to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, whose sketches and etchings of trees are amongst the most beautiful productions of English art. Mr. Delamotte was a pupil of the late venerable Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy, In a very few days, Lady Ely informed Mr. Nicholson that she had made the inquiry he wished of the King, who told her that "when he (George III.) was a young man, it was represented to him that there were a number of old oaks in the park which had become unsightly objects, and that it would be desirable to take | had given such an order inadvertently, because them down; he gave immediate directions that he found that, among the rest, the remains of such trees as were of this description should be Herne's Oak had been destroyed." removed; but he was afterwards sorry that he |