THE 



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JOURNAL OF RURAL ART AM) RURAL TASTE. 



Vol. I. 



JUNE, 1S47. 



No. 12. 



An American may be allowed some honest 

 pride i#- the beauty and profusion of fine 

 forest trees, natives of our western hemi- 

 sphere. North America is the land of oaks, 

 pines, and magnolias, to say nothing of the 

 lesser genera ; and the parks and gardens 

 of all Europe, owe their choicest sylvan 

 treasures to our native woods and hills. 



But there is one tree, almost everywhere 

 naturalized in Europe — an evergreen tree as 

 pre-eminently grand and beautiful among 

 evergreens, as a proud shipof the line among 

 little coasting vessels — a historical tree, as 

 rich in sacred and poetic association as Mount 

 Sinai itself — a hardy tree, from a region of 

 mountain snows, which bears the winter of 

 the middle States; and yet, notwithstand- 

 ing all these unrivalled claims to attention, 

 we believe there are not at this moment a 

 dozen good specimens of it, twenty feet 

 high, in the United States. 



We mean, of course, that world-renowned 

 tree, the Cedar of Lebanon: that tree which 

 was the favorite of the wisest of kings ; the 

 wood of which kindled the burnt offerings of 

 the Israelites in the lime of Moses; of which 

 was built the temple of Solomon, and which 

 the Prophet EzEKiEL so finely used as a 

 simile in describing a great empire ; — " Be- 

 68 



hold the Assyrian was a Cedar in Lebanon, 

 with fair branches, and with a shadowing 

 shroud, and of a high stature; and his top 

 was among the thick boughs. His boughs 

 were multiplied, and his branches became 

 long. The fir trees were not like his boughs, 

 nor the chestnut trees like his branches, nor 

 any tree in the garden of God like unto him 

 in beauty." 



The original forests of this tree upon 

 Mount Lebanon, must have been truly vast, 

 as Solomon's " forty thousand hewers" 

 were employed there in cutting the timber 

 used in building the temple. It is indeed 

 most probable that they never recovered or 

 were renewed afterwards, since modern tra- 

 vellers give accounts of their gradual disap- 

 pearance. Such however is the great age 

 and longevity of this tree, that it is highly 

 credible that the few existing old specimens 

 on Mount Lebanon, are remnant.s of the 

 ancient forest. Lamartine, who made a 

 voyage to the Holy Land, and visited these 

 trees in 1832, gives the following account 

 of them : 



" We alighted and sat down under a rock 

 fo contemplate them. These trees are the 

 most renov/ned natural monuments in the 

 universe ; religion, poetry, and historv, have 



