THE novelist who draws his characters and incidents wholly from imagination, and embellishes his tale with the creatures of a vivid brain, acts but his part and in proportion as his incidents are novel, and his recital natural, so will he rank in the world of letters. Even the modern historian, though he write for the sober Anglo-Saxon, and describe the manners of those once seated on the British throne, and the courtly customs of the age which he professes to portray, may occasionally decorate his pages with a flight of fancy, soaring into the imaginative world, plucking here and there a flower, to incorporate in the wreath which he is weaving.

Alas 1 that a single blossom should bear a thorn, or that the historian, in seeking to "point his moral or adorn his tale," should sometimes tinge the laurel which binds the brow of the virtuous and venerated. He, whoever he be, who writes for the Horticulturist, is bound by sterner editorial rule, and must restrain himself within a narrower sphere, else he may read the expressive admonition, "Arborator should confine himself to facts; mere speculation is not suited to our pages." Enough by way of introduction; let us to our pencilings.

On a day towards the close of August, 1135, there were assembled a small company of neighboring gentry, at the residence of one of England's aristocracy, whose broad acres, which lay around the baronial mansion, had been transmitted in an unbroken line since the days of William the Conqueror, given in reward for services rendered that most successful fillibus-ter. On either hand was evidence of refined and elevated taste; - noble trees with widely-extended arms, the growth of centuries; statuary in immediate proximity to the house; and in the distance herds of deer are reposing in conscious security, or feeding on the emerald grass, so peculiar to the English landscape. The mansion itself was of varied order and irregular outline, indicating, as was the fact, its erection at several widely separated periods; on one of the gables could be observed, in distinct figures, 1560, showing that it, at least, had been erected during the reign of England's virgin queen. Another gable, which bore the date 1630, with a C, surrounded by a halo of rude brick work, told clearly of the days of Charles I., and that the baron of that generation was a gallant cavalier.

The dinner to which the guests had been invited had been discussed with the hearty good will of English country gentlemen, and the dessert, which principally consisted of the various fruits of the season, had with the removal of the cloth been placed upon the table - the signal for freer con-versation than had been permitted by the severer duties which had preceded.

With our limited notes it is difficult to determine all the topics of their "table talk;" we be may sure, however, it was not of steam, either as applied to arts or navigation; it was not of railroads, with the engine snorting and puffing in its onward course; nor was it of the electric telegraph, rivaling the lightning's speed, and binding together the extremes of earth by an attenuated thread, more potent than all the cables of the world. Such probably would be among the topics at the present day, for they were men of cultivated minds, alive to every subject of public interest; but at the period of which we write, the great book of natural science and of physics had been but partially unfolded. It is true man's wonderful discovery was made; the philosopher of Wootsthorpo had already given to the world, in his Principia, the result of his profoundest calculations; perhaps these were among the subjects of discussion: - or they may have been of literature: the stars of Johnson, of Goldsmith, and of Garrick, had not yet risen, and Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, were still almost unknown, - but the great delineator of man's feelings, impulses, and passions, had lived, and though dead had left behind his immortal record; and a glorious galaxy, among whom Addison and Steele shone brightly, had shed its lustre on English letters.

It is an axiom ever true as the needle to the pole, that kindred spirits congregate, and they who now there met together were not mere country squires, boasting of the performance of their horses, or their hounds. The conversation was, however, principally on rural affairs - crops, tillage, trees - of the latter, not only with reference to ornament, but utility as well. The Fir, since generally known as the Scotch, (though it has no special claim to be thus designated, being indigenous to the greater part of Europe,) had but recently been prominently introduced to public notice, and tens of thousands were being that day planted on untillable steeps and rocky bill-sides, that yielded scarce a blade of grass to the sheep which rambled over them. It is this tree of which Churchill wrote in in ecstatic praise, many years after that in which our company was assembled:

" The pine of mountain race,

The fir - the Scotch fir never out of place".

And Scott, at a still later day:

"And higher yet the pine tree hang His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seem'd the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky".

The White Pine of America, named in England, Weymouth, in honor of him at whose estate at Longleat, in Wiltshire, great quantities were being planted, had been but lately imported, and from the description of its noble size in its native soil, was dividing attention with the fir. A spirited comparison of their respective merits was made by the party present, some claiming the larger share for the fir, others maintaining, on the authority of travelers in the colonies, the superior merit of the pine: experience, the only true test, has demonstrated the correcter judgment of those who advocated the tree from beyond the Tweed, as best adapted to the climate of Britain, and which at this day clothes untold acres, yielding almost boundless wealth to the desoendents of the men whose foresight had thus made fruitful heretofore barren wastes. The scions of the age of which we write are now stately trees, or as is the case with many - afloat - component parts of England's mighty navy and commercial marine.