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poet that does not find some occasion to sing its praises; and Loton, the landscape painter, so much delighted in it, that he contrived to introduce one into all his pictures.

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The use which the poets have made of trees, by way of illustration, is moral and important. Homer frequently embellishes his subjects with references to them; and no passage in the Iliad is more beautiful than the one where, in imitation of Musæus, he compares the falling of leaves and shrubs to the fall and renovation of ancient families. Illustrations of this sort are frequent, too, in the sacred writings. "I am exalted like a cedar in Libanus," says the author of Ecclesiastes, "and as a cypress-tree upon the mountain of Hermon. I was exalted like a palmtree in Engeddi, and as a rose-plant in Jericho; as a turpentine-tree I stretched out my branches, and my branches are the branches of honour and grace. As a vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are the fruits of honour and victory." In the Psalms, in a fine vein of allegory, the vine is made to represent the people of Israel: "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cut out the heathen, and planted it. Thou didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with its shadow, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars."

In Ossian, how beautiful is the following passage of Malvina's lamentation for Oscar: "I was a lovely tree in thy presence, Oscar, with all my branches round me; but thy death came, like a blast from the desert, and laid my green head low: the spring returned with its showers, but no green leaf of mine arose." Again, where, old and weary, blind, and almost destitute of friends, he compares himself to a tree that is dried up and decayed: "But Ossian is a tree that is withered; its branches are blasted and bare; no green leaf covers its boughs; from its trunk no young shoot is seen to spring: the breeze

whistles in its gray moss; the blast shakes its head of age; the storm will soon overturn it, and strew all its dry branches with thee, oh Dermid! and with all the rest of the mighty dead, in the green winding vale of Cona."

Petrarch could never behold an olive-tree but his imagination presented to him that simile in Homer, where he compares Euphorbus, struck by the lance of Patroclus, to an olive uprooted by a whirlwind: a simile so harmonious in all its parts, that even Pythagoras set it to music, played it upon his harp, and adopted it for his epicedium.

Vegetable Analogies and Similitudes.—Analogies are continually presented to us between trees and sentiments. Phocion, hearing an orator one day promising a number of fine things to the Athenians, exclaimed, "I think I now see a cypress-tree in its leaves, its branches, and in its height it is beautiful; but, alas! it bears no fruit." In Milton, Eve declares to Adam that his conversation was more sweet to her ear than was the fruit of the palm-tree to her palate; and Quintilian likens Ennius to a grove, which, sacred from its antiquity, fills the mind with religious awe. "Plotinus," says Gassendi, “compared the souls of men, emanating from and partaking of the Divine mind, to the leaves, flowers, and fruits belonging to the body of a tree." Beautiful, too, is the metaphor, and delicate the flattery, where Horace represents the glory of Cæsar's house as resembling a tree rising slowly from its seed, and, after several ages, spreading its branches to the heavens ; then towering with as much dignity in the forest as did Marcellus above all other youths. Blair compares a good man to an oak, whose branches the tempest may indeed bend, but whose root it can never touch: a tree which may occasionally be stripped of its leaves and blossoms, but which still maintains its place, and in due season flourishes

anew.

These analogies and similitudes are not entirely unobserved by savage nations of this the speech of the Scythian ambassadors to Alexander is strikingly illustrative. "If your person were as gigantic as your desires," said they, "the world would not contain you. Your right hand would touch the east, and your left the west. You grasp at more than you are equal to. From Europe you reached Asia: from Asia you laid hold on Europe; and, if you conquer all mankind, you seem disposed to wage war with woods and snows, with rivers and wild beasts, and to attempt to subdue Nature. But have you considered the natural course of things? Have you reflected that great trees are many years in arriving at their height, and yet are cut down in an hour? It is foolish to think of the fruit only, without considering the height you have to climb to come at it. Take care lest, while you strive to reach the top, you fall to the ground with the branches you have Laid hold of."* The whole of this speech, though spoken by a barbarian, is superior to any other preserved by Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, or Livy; Sallust, Tacitus, Davila, or Guicciardini.

The argument as to the relative excellence of ancient and modern genius, acquires new light from the ingenuity of Fontenelle and the rejoinder of Du Bos. "The question," said Fontenelle, “is reducible to this point, viz., whether trees do or do not grow in our times as luxuriantly as in the times of the Greeks and Romans. The surest way to determine this point is to consult natural philosophy. She has the secret of abridging many disputes, that rhetoric would protract to eternity." "With all my heart," rejoined Du Bos; "I freely give my consent. What answer does she give us? She tells us two

* Montesquieu has an admirable illustration of the same idea: "When the savages of Louisiana," says he, "wish for fruit, they cut down the tree at the root to gather it. Behold a picture of despotic government."

things essential to our argument. The first is, that some plants have, in all times, attained greater perfection in one country than another: the second, that even in the same country trees and plants do not produce every year fruits of equal goodness."

Some writer has compared the human heart to certain medicinal trees, which yield not their healing balm till they have been wounded: a simile and sentiment forcibly reminding us of the "Non ignara mali" of the gentle but unfortunate Dido. Montesquieu, anticipating the difficulty of searching into the origin of the feudal laws of the Franks, has an illustration, also, finely suited to our subject. "The feudal laws," says he, "present a very beautiful prospect. A venerable oak raises its head to the skies; the eye sees from afar its spreading branches; upon drawing nearer, it perceives the trunk, but does not discover the root; the ground must be dug to discover that."

Similar illustrations are to be met with among Asiatic writers. Ferdousee thus concludes his satire upon Sultan Mahmound: "That tree, the nature of which is bitter, were you to plant it in the Garden of Eden, and water it with the ambrosial stream of Paradise, and were you to manure its roots with virgin honey, would, after all, discover its innate disposition, and only yield the acrid fruit that it had ever yielded."

That trees have something analogous to sensation, it were indicative of ignorance in Nature's economy to doubt. Hence the poets and mythologists have supposed them to be the residence of inferior deities; and beautiful are the fictions which have arisen out of this belief. Not to mention any from the ancient writers, Ariosto describes those who suffered themselves to listen to the fascinations of Alcina as being changed into beeches, palms, olives, and cedars; and far superior to the fictions of Ovid is that of Tasso, where he describes Rinaldo arri

As

ving at an enchanted wood, where he sees a large myrtle surrounded by a hundred smaller ones. he approaches, the air resounds with bewitching music; every tree opens, and discloses nymphs of seraphic beauty; who, forming into a circle, welcome him to the enchanted grove with songs of pleasure and delight.

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An attentive observer discovers, for the most part, but little monotony in Nature. The meridian day succeeds to morning, evening to noon, and night to evening; summer to spring, and winter to autumn. The sea itself frequently changes its appearance in the course of the day. When the sun shines brightly, its colour is cerulean; when it gleams through a mist, it is yellow; and as the clouds pass over, it not unfrequently assumes their tintings. The same diversity may be observed throughout nature; even the glaciers of the Grisons presenting varied aspects, though clad in perpetual snow. At dawn of day they appear saffron; at noon their whiteness is that of excess; and as the sun sinks in the west, they become as yellow as burnished gold; while their convex and peaked summits reflect, with softened lustre, the matchless hues of an evening sky. Hence Virgil applies the epithet purpureum to the sea, and not unfrequently to mountains, while Statius colours the earth with the splendour of Aurora. The same is beautifully alluded to by Mallet. The sun,

"Glorious from amid

A pomp of golden clouds, th' Atlantic flood
Beheld oblique; and o'er its azure breast
Waved one unbounded blush."

These successive alternations impart a perpetual variety to the same objects Hence the frequent

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