190 THE DEATH OF THE TREE. 



matter which was formed by the labors of generations of 

 shoots and leaves which have preceded the present gene- 

 ration, which still continues to cover its venerable stem 

 and branches with the renewed verdure and beauty of the 

 spring-time of its life ? 



Reader, if you wish for peace and contentment of mind, 

 study Nature. You will be brought into communion with 

 the infinite and eternal. You will become temperate in 

 your desires. You will love truth and righteousness. 

 The contemplation of this majestic system of continuous 

 and eternal change will give loftiness to your thoughts ; 

 free your mind from a groveling and ignorant supersti- 

 tion ; give you just, confiding, worthy views of your 

 Creator, and enable you to march through life with a 

 firm, with a manly step. This world is full of beauty 

 little understood or appreciated. An overflowing good- 

 ness has covered the earth with flowers and glorious 

 forest trees, yet how few, comparatively speaking, care to 

 know anything about them. We invite you to this grand 

 and ancient library ; to the study of these volumes over- 

 flowing with wisdom and instruction. It is not the mere 

 study of Nature, but the impressive lessons which she 

 teaches. Thoughts of infinitude and eternity come to 

 me from the distant stars, and from the forms of vanished 

 life laid up in the rocks, reminding me that my own life 

 is fleeting and evanescent, as the vapor of morning. The 

 lofty tree, with its wealth of branches and foliage, perishes 

 alike with one of the lowly undistinguished blades of 

 grass which it overshadows ; so none are so high or well- 

 known but they shall, ere long, lie low and be forgotten. 

 And herein is seen the wisdom and equity of the arrange- 

 ments of Nature, that all must submit to the same great 

 laws of decay and dissolution. She shows, in this re- 

 spect, no partiality. Superior talent, energy, or social 

 position, may for awhile elevate some fragments of hu- 

 manity above their fellows, but all are in the end reduced 

 to the same level. 



