THE POETRY OF TREES. 



507 



away in the reformation, and you now approach 



the modern mansion, lor the okl hall is down or 

 deserted, circuitously, after a fashion of one of the 

 representatives of the people making a speech in 

 Parliament, who prefers taking two hoars to reach 

 a conclusion at which lie might have arrived by 

 driving on straight forward, in about live minutes 

 and a half, i_ r oiiiL r at the accelerated but not un- 

 reasonable rale of eight miles an hour. Perhaps 

 an old kirk, or church be it — the very parish one 

 — is found to be too near the house; for, though 

 faint, and far off", still when the atmosphere is 

 clear, and the wind west, you can hear the voice 

 of psalms; and therefore that the silence of Sab- 

 bath may not be rudely disturbed, the kirk or 

 church, with spire or tower, is swept away, and 

 its burial-ground, so inoffensive with its ' ; low me- 

 morials still erected nigh," shut up — but no — that 

 may not be — for the poor parishioners will insist 

 on laying their bones beside those of their forefa- 

 thers ; and surely a few funerals in the year — say 

 a score at the most — need not spoil the rich man's 

 appetite for dinner — if appetite he otherwise would 

 have had ; nor may the holy bell that used to toll 

 to prayer now be heard with its little cracked 

 tinkling, so much louder is the gong that sum- 

 mons to lunch or tiffin, and sets the flunkies afloat 

 through all the stair-cases from parlor to pantry, 

 from Moll, the poeny-rose of the kitchen, to Louisa, 

 the white lily of the drawing-room, languishing 

 and luxury being alike the order of the day, from 

 cellar to garret; for in high life, both above and 

 below stairs. 



'• Love is Heaven, and Heaven is Love." 



Let all people, then, beware of dealers in this 

 picturesque; for they are universally greedy, and 

 generally ignorant, and may do more harm in a 

 week, than Nature can repair in a year. Get 

 some painter of genius, like Andrew Wilson, or 

 William Allen, or John Watson Gordon, or Hugh 

 Williams, or Alexander Nasmyth, or Mr. Thom- 

 son of Duddingstone, to come sauntering out with 

 his portfolio, and take up his abode for a few days 

 in your friendly house, strolling about with you 

 during the forenoons among the banks and braes, 

 and beautifying the paper during the evenings 

 with fair creations of taste and fancy, prophetic 

 of the future beauties and glories that shall ere 

 long be over shading your estate. They will not 

 scare the Naiads, the Dryads, and the Hamadry- 

 ads, from their old haunted nooks — the fairies will 

 not fly their approach, any more than the rooks 

 and herons — in every pool and turn, Nature will 

 behold herself not only in undiminished but in 

 heightened charms — Flora will walk hand in hand 

 with Pomona, and the two together will smile 

 tly on old Father Pan, roaming in all his 

 original hairiness in the forests. And happily you 

 may have among yonr friends some poet, 



'• Who loiiriiiur- near tin- hidden lip'uks 



A inii-ie sweeter than Iheii own ' 



Him you may consult, at the close of his noontide 

 reverie, and from his sown words will spring up 



all varieties of grace, loveliness, and majesty, till 



every woodland murmur breathes of poetry, and 



poetry brightens from the heaven of every tree- 

 and-cloud-shadowed water, asleep within the si- 

 lence of the solitary woods. 



Of the multitude id' thoughts within us, we 

 know not one more cheering than the belief, that 

 the world is, and ever must be, in a state of very 



great ignorance about all those things that are of 

 most avail to human use or pleasure. There is a 

 perpetual flux ami reflux — ebb and flow of all 

 things on the face of this our pleasant earth. 

 Look up to the hill-side, and you see the water- 

 line of beauty, parallel to that on the opposite 

 green range, telling that loinr ago a loch filled 

 the valley, till it burst the mound that confined it, 

 and away it flowed on, in a river, to the sea. 

 Look on those ruins, apparently of houses — inland 

 now, it may be said — yet shells are to be gathered 

 still around the garden wall, touched in the olden 

 time by the foot of the flowing Neptune. Or 

 look into that lucid bay, and you will see the 

 roofs of chimney-tops of what once were cottages 

 — cottages that stood at night on the shore, 

 twinkling like stars; while on the silvery sands 

 between them and the sea the fishermen dried 

 their nets. All this is at once melancholy and 

 consoling, to be thought of alternately with a 

 smile and a tear. Then for the march of intel- 

 lect, it is fortunately often retrograde; for, if it 

 were not, intellect would march on to the utmost 

 possible length of its tether — break the tether, and 

 fall over " the back of beyond." But intellect 

 has more sense; and, therefore, may be often 

 seen suddenly ordering the whole army to halt, 

 light and heavy brigades alike — going into winter 

 epiarters — encamping on the spot, or perhaps fall- 

 ing back upon the wagons and commissariat. 

 Thus it is impossible that the grand campaign can 

 ever come to an end till the stars slacken in their 

 courses, and the sun is kicked out of that solar 

 system of his, where he is seen t: out-shining like 

 a visible God, the path on which he trode," kicked 

 out of his own solar system, just like a foot- 

 ball. 



Thus, to return to trees. Trees have been 

 planted for these six thousand years and upward, 

 and vet were some forester who planted, long be- 

 fore the Christian era, the palm-trees by the wells 

 of Palestine — or the cedars from Lebanon along 

 the banks of the brook Kidron — to open his eyes to 

 a perusal of Monteath's Forest Guide, we do not 

 believe that the good old Jew would think the 

 Galwegian a whit wiser than himself — or that he 

 would even think Sir Walter had worked a mira- 

 cle in that famous article of his own planting, No. 

 72. of that thriving journal, the Quarterly Re- 

 view. Though we think we can point out a few 

 rather important mistakes in the moral wisdom of 

 Solomon, vet we perfectly agree with him in his 

 apothegm, "that there is nothing new under the 

 sun." That Solomon knew both the theory and 

 practice of transplanting tree-., we arc not with- 



