THE PAGE OF NATURE. 63 



skill and power, and luxuriantly adorns them with her 

 living garniture of beauty; and these softening stains 

 with which she touches the rude, stern masses she dis- 

 joins, have their value in the composition not simply on 

 account of the pleasure they afford to the eye by the 

 mere tints of a painter's palette, but also and chiefly on 

 account of the meaning they suggest through the eye to 

 the mind as the genuine and expressive colouring of 

 time. To the trees of the forest, lichens impart a sin- 

 gularly aged and venerable appearance which irresistibly 

 commands our homage, and leads our thoughts far back 

 over the dim path of years to the memories of primitive 

 times. So abundant are they in the Highland woods, 

 that every tree is covered with their long white stream- 

 ing tufts, which look on the green tassel-laden branches, 

 and among the fringy, waving hollows of the pyramid- 

 like foliage, like the snowy blossoms of some unknown 

 fruit-tree. It is impossible to enter a pine forest adorned 

 with a profusion of these curious plants, without admir- 

 ing the wild and picturesque appearance which it pre- 

 sents. The hoary trees seem like an assembly of aged 

 bearded Druids, metamorphosed by some awful spell 

 while in the act of worshipping their mysterious deity ; 

 while the feelings of solemn awe and reverence with 

 which we regard them are deepened and rendered more 

 intense and overpowering by the dread silence, the utter 

 solitude that reigns around a silence broken only by 

 the low, deep, sybilline sigh of the wind among the tree- 

 tops ; the faint crackling sound of the falling pine-cones ; 

 or perchance, at rare intervals, the wild, melancholy 

 cries of some little wandering bird afraid to find itself 



