meant to have said something about--"why should we expect the inner
life to be one course of unbroken self-improvement," etc.--You
recollect? Well, it puts me in mind of a conversation between a
complacent poplar and a grim old oak, which I overheard the other
day. The poplar said that it grew up quite straight, heavenwards,
that all its branches pointed the same way, and always had done so.
Turning to the oak, which it had been talking at before for some
time, the poplar went on to remark, that it did not wish to say
anything unfriendly to a brother of the forest, but those warped and
twisted branches seemed to show strange struggles. The tall thing
concluded its oration by saying, that it grew up very fast, and that
when it had done growing, it did not suffer itself to be made into
huge floating engines of destruction. But different trees had
different tastes. There was then a sound from the old oak, like an
"ah" or a "whew," or, perhaps, it was only the wind amongst its
resisting branches; and the gaunt creature said that it had had ugly
winds from without and cross-grained impulses from within; that it
knew it had thrown out awkwardly a branch here and a branch there,
which would never come quite right again it feared; that men worked
it up, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil--but that at any
rate it had not lived for nothing. The poplar began again
immediately, for this kind of tree can talk for ever, but I patted
the old oak approvingly and went on.

Milverton. Well, your trees divide their discourse somewhat
Ellesmerically: they do not talk with the simplicity La Fontaine's
would; but there is a good deal in them. They are not altogether
sappy.

Ellesmere. I really thought of this fable of mine the other day, as