Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 6.djvu/266

258 with imaginative charms, which add new purposes of religion and virtue, of free- wonders to our views of creation and new dom and happiness, of poetry and science, dignity to life. Man now learns to regard as well as those of mere taste and econo- trees in other relations beside their ca- my. I am persuaded that trees are close- pacity to supply his physical and mechaii- ly connected with the fate of nations, that ical wants. He looks upon them as the they are the props of industry and civili- principal ornaments of the face of crea- zation, and that in all countries from which tion, and as forming the conservatories the forests have disappeared the people of Nature, in which she rears those mi- have sunk into indolence and servitude, nute Vonders of her skill, the flowers and Though we may not be close observers smaller plants that will flourish only un- of Nature, we cannot fail to have remark- der their protection, and those insect hosts ed that there is an infinite variety in the that charm the student with their beauty forms of trees, as well as in their habits, and excite his wonder by their mysteri- By those who have observed them as land- ous instincts. Science, too, has built an scape ornaments, trees have been classi- altar under the trees, and delivers thence fied according to their shape and manner new oracles of wisdom, teaching man how of growth. They are round-headed or they are mysteriously wedded to the hemispherical, like the Oak and the clouds, and are thus made the blessed Plane ; pyramidal, like the Pine and instruments of their beneficence to the the Fir ; obeliscal, like the Arbor-Vitaa earth. and Lombardy Poplar ; drooping, like the Not without reason did the ancients White Elm and the Weeping Willow; and place the Naiad and her fountain in the umbrella-shaped, like the Palm. These shady arbor of trees, whose foliage gath- are the natural or normal varieties in the ers the waters of heaven into her fount and forms of trees. There are others which preserves them from dissipation. From may be considered accidental : such are their dripping shades she distributes the the tall and irregularly shaped trees which waters, which she has garnered from the have been cramped by growing in a dense skies, over the plain and the valley : and forest that does not permit the extension the husbandman, before he has learned of their lateral branches ; such also are the marvels of science, worships the be- the pollards which have been repeatedly neficent Naiad, who draws the waters of cut down or dwarfed by the axe of the her fountain from heaven, and from her woodman. sanctuary in the groves showers them Of the round-headed trees, that extend upon the arid glebe and adds new ver- their branches more or less at wide angles dure to the plain. After science has ex- from their trunk, the Oak is the most plained to us the law by which these sup- conspicuous and the most celebrated. To plies of moisture are furnished by the the mind of an American, however, the trees, we still worship the beneficent Nai- Oak is far less familiar than the Elm, as ad : we would not remove the drapery a way-side tree ; but in England, where of foliage that protects her fountain, nor many drive her into exile bv the destruction of " a cottage-chimney smokes the trees, through whose leaves she holds From betwixt two aged Oaks," mysterious commerce with the skies and saves our fields from drought. this tree, which formerly received divine It is in these relations, leaving their honors in that country, is now hardly less uses in economy and the arts untouched, sacred in the eyes of the inhabitants, on that I would now speak of trees. I would account of their familiarity with its shelter consider them as they appear to the poet and its shade, and their ideas of its use- and the painter, as they are connected fulness to the human family. The history with scenery, and with the romance and of the British Isles is closely interwoven mythology of Nature, and as serving the with circumstances connected with the