THE 



^^'■^iiMt •> 





JOURNAL OF RURAL ART Affl) RURAL TASTE. 



Vol. I. 



MARCH, 1S47. 



No. 9. 



" The man who loves not trees, to look 

 at them, to lie under them, to climb up 

 them, (once more a schoolboy) would make 

 no bones of murdering Mrs. Jeffs. In what 

 one imaginable attribute, that it ought to pos- 

 sess, is a tree, pray, deficient ? Light, shade, 

 shelter, coolness, freshness, music, — all the 

 colors of the rainbow, dew and dreams drop- 

 ping through their soft twilight, at eve and 

 morn, — dropping direct, soft, sweet, sooth- 

 ing, restorative from heaven. Withont trees, 

 how, in the name of wonder, could we have 

 had houses, ships, bridges, easy chairs, or 

 coffins, or almost any single one of the ne- 

 cessaries, comforts, or conveniences of life ? 

 Without trees, one man might have been 

 born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but 

 not another with a wooden ladle." 



of sympathy with the good and beautiful, 

 must involuntarily respond to this rhapsody 

 of Christopher North's, in behalf of trees 

 — the noblest and proudest drapery that sets 

 off the figure of our fair planet. Every 

 man's better sentiments would involuntarily 

 lead him to cherish, respect, and admire 

 trees. And no one who has sense enough 



in one of our grand and majestic forest 

 trees, could ever destroy it, unnecessarily, 

 without a painful feeling, we should say, 

 akin at least to murder in the fourth degree. 

 Yet it must be confessed, that it is sur- 

 prising, when, from the force of circumstan- 

 ces, what the phrenologists call the princi- 

 ple of destrucliveness, gets excited, how sad- 

 ly men's better feelings are warped and 

 smothered. Thus, old soldiers sweep away 

 ranks of men with as little compunction as 

 the mower swings his harmless scythe in a 

 meadow ; and settlers, pioneers, and squat- 

 ters, girdle and make a clearing, in a cen- 

 tennial forest, perhaps one of the grandest 

 that ever God planted, with no more re- 

 morse than we have in brushing away dusty 

 cobwebs. We are not now about to declaim 



Every man, who has in his nature a spark " against war, as a member of the peace so- 



ciety, or against planting colonies and ex- 

 tending the human family, as would a dis- 

 ciple of Dr. Malthus. These are probably 

 both wise means of progress, in the hands 

 of the Great Worker. 



But it is properly our business to bring 

 men back to their better feelings, when the 

 fever of destruction is over. If our ances- 



rightly to understand the wonderful system j tors found it wise and necessary to cut down 

 of life, order, and harmonv, that is involved I vast forests, it is all the more needful 



50 



