2G THE PINE. 



meadows ; and except when the trees sustain their share of the white 

 wonder of winter, the aspect is perennially the same. The pine-wood 

 is always stilL Therefore we note in it more intensely than anywhere 

 else, that grand sound of the wind among the tops that is so like the 

 distant song of the sea. This circumstance has attracted the notice of 

 observers of nature in all ages. Theocritus, who wrote pastorals more 

 than 2,000 years ago, commences one of his beautiful poems with 

 " Sweet is the murmur of the wind among the pine-trees ! " The 

 poets of our own age might be quoted a hundred times, in echo. 

 Probably the great peculiarity of the sound in question 'comes of the 

 needle-like form of the leaves, and of their infinite number,' the wind 

 playing among them in a way that the broad flat leaves of such trees 

 as the oak cannot possibly admit of. Then there are the associations ; 

 for a true poet never rests in the sentiment of simple beauty, or the sense 

 of awe, or of grandeur, or of duration. His sympathies run imme- 

 diately to things that concern the welfare and the happiness of his 

 race. The test of uncommon sense is that it can throw light upon the 

 things that belong to common sense; and the test of the true poet is 

 that he can enter into the practical, illustrate it, make it more delightful 

 in our eyes and to our daily experience ; that he can many, in a word, 

 the ideal to the familiar and prosaic. If he do not do this, he is only 

 a sentimentalist, and the world does not require him, nor profit by his 

 presence in it. Take "for instance, the grand thoughts that arrest the 

 mind as to the utilities of these wonderful trees. The profusion of 

 their growth, and their stateliness, as set forth in the pine-wood ; their 

 duration also, and the serenity of their lives, all seem fitting counter- 

 parts of their inexpressible value to man. Timber, of the most 

 admirable description, as deal and cedar ; resins in a score of kinds, 

 translucent and inflammable ; with many other useful articles of human 

 need, are supplied by their different species, and in some cases, are the 

 last that we should expect from conifers. Creosote, that assuages the 

 pain of an aching tooth, is derived from a conifer ; so is that exquisite 

 balsam in which the microscopist preserves his most delicate curiosities, 

 giving them a shrine more beautiful than monarch ever possessed. 

 Canada-balsam, the substance used by microscopists, represents in 

 their hands the resin of those ancient conifers which we now know 

 under the name of amber. For amber was once the liquid secretion of 

 a kind of pine or fir, and the insects that we find embedded in it were 

 preserved by the elegant operations of nature, just after the same 

 manner as those of the microscopist's cabinet. 



