My next associate of the tree species was the "_Castle Beech_." Oh, what a tree it was, and still (I humbly hope) is!--for the hand of man is not yet formed in the womb which will dare to cut it down; and it stands mighty in its individual girth, awful in its spread, and sheltered in its position. This tree is the chronicler of my school days at Wallacehall: on the smooth and ample bark of that tree are imprinted or obliterated recollections of a fearful nature. Oh! who dares to take a peep into the charnel-house of fifty years? There they are, playing it hard and happy, at dools toosty, or England and Scotland.
"Alas! regardless of their doom, The little victims play: No sense have they of ills to come-- No cares beyond to-day!"
But let forty years, with Juggernaut wheels, crash and creak over us, and where are the happy hearts and merry voices? The sea will answer; for she has had her full share. The river, the bloody river _Nith_, will and must answer; for in its deceitful waters was lost my old and kind class-fellow and companion, Richard Reid. The west must give up its dead, and the east answer to my call. Where am I? My dear schoolfellows, where are you? Why don't you answer? Alas! _at sixty_, I can scarcely count six contemporaries who still breathe with me the breath of heaven, and rejoice in a protracted though misimproved existence. But the old beech, my kind friend Mr Watt of the castle informs me, is still standing, though almost by a miracle, for his branches are so large and numerous that he groaned, and creaked, and swung most dreadfully under the tempest's shock. But it would not do; even the prince of the aerial powers was foiled at last, and was compelled to desist from his unhallowed attempt. The Castle Beech has weathered the storm; and there are hearts in every land which will rejoice in the information which I now convey.
But the "Three Brethren," the friends and companions of my more mature years, are now no more. They have fallen with those cedars of Lebanon, the mighty monarchs of Arbigland--_they_ have perished, and in their fate have nearly involved that of their intelligent and benevolent proprietor. But my heart reverts to Collestoun, and to the banks of the blue and silver Nith, and to the Three Brethren. The pages of the intelligent "Times" (county newspaper) are wet with the tears of lamentation. But the "Times" knows not--it could not, and it cannot know--the one-half that honest Allan Cunningham and I know about these remarkable trees. Their traditional history is this:--