THE OAK. 17 



striking in nature. We should expect it in some degree from the inti- 

 mate affinities everywhere displayed to the man of science. But it is 

 independent of these, lying outside, just as the exquisite resemblance 

 of the shake in music to the play of moonlight upon rippled water lies 

 outside of any actual connection, yet is as much a part of the method 

 and order of nature as the ripple of the water itself. So with the 

 charming similitude of the painted leaves of autumn to the variegated 

 western sky of evening. The close of the year and the close of the 

 day both acquire a tinted loveliness peculiarly their own, marked and 

 soul-inspiring in the highest degree, yet in no measure connected or 

 comparable one with another, as to their physical causes. The two 

 things lie outside, yet are alike, plainly because God says, death, depar- 

 ture, decay, need not necessarily be ugly and disagreeable to look at : 

 they may be made lovely as life, yea, lovelier ; and if there be wretched- 

 ness in their aspect, probably it is our own eyes that look obliquely. 

 Whether it be a soul about to cross the river that has no bridge, or 

 trees that are about to cast their vestures, and be for awhile, as it were, 

 dead, or the day that is to be exchanged for starlight, it is still compa- 

 tible with its passing away that the light of beauty shall be diffused 

 there. 



The other fern referred to as being often very naturally associated with 

 the oak is, in truth, like the Dryopteris, the image of an oak-profile in 

 little, but it is not from that circumstance that the connection has been 

 supposed to exist. When the stem of the plant in question, commonly 

 called Bracken or Brake, and by botanists Pteris Aquilina, is cut slant- 

 wise a short distance above the root, the section of the sap-vessels 

 gives a kind of rude drawing of an ancient and massive oak, loaded 

 with exuberant foliage that bends the branches towards the ground. 

 A thousand strange resemblances of this nature might be described, 

 showing that our world is positively one of echoes not necessarily for 

 the ear, but rather, mainly for the eye, which in its powers and privi- 

 leges is the synthesis and compend of all the other organs of sense. 



Lastly, concerning the oak, should be mentioned the great age which 

 it attains 



The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees, 

 Shoots rising tip, and spreads by slow degrees ; 

 Three centuries he grows, and three he stays 

 Supreme in state, and in three more decays. 



Nine hundred years, that is to say, constitute the ordinary term of oak- 

 life. But there are in Great Britain many examples of oak-trees of 



8 



