28 THE PINE. 



have been alive in the days of the Caesars of old Rome. We have nothing 

 like such longevity exhibited in any conifers in England, though there 

 are examples of yews in this country computed to be more than 2,000 

 years old ; but it is quite enough for the reflective man to stand in a 

 forest of such trees as the Scotch fir, and consider what a dynasty he 

 confronts. The venerable in nature is always commanding ; but when 

 age stretches back to the days of the Coliseum and of the Parthenon, 

 it becomes almost above believing. Never, perhaps, does the brevity 

 of human existence affect us so powerfully as when contrasted with 

 these seemingly immortal trees. Generations come and go, but they 

 continue unchanged. Schleiden, the great German botanist, and some 

 disciples of his in England, compare these vegetable Nestors to the 

 planet on which we dwell, teaching that the trunk of the tree is the 

 analogue of the surface of the earth, while the foliage represents the 

 successive tides of population. Nor is there anything in the com- 

 parison that philosophy would object to. The individual contents of 

 the world are in every instance miniatures, after their own fashion and 

 in their own way, of the magnificent total of nature. Every one of 

 them is imperium in imperio, a kingdom within a kingdom, presenting 

 all the parts, principles, and phenomena of the collective, only in a 

 subdued and more attenuated manner, appropriate to the sphere of its 

 own utility. 



