SO THE BEECH. 



a grand old cathedral, we say, with these, and the thousand other 

 solacing and inspiring charms, is always the counterpart, among men's 

 works, of the ancient forest, where, in some mode or arfother, every one 

 of its imposing qualities is reverberated ; it is pleasing, accordingly, to 

 find that here and there, amid the trees of the wood, the exact forms 

 and ideas worked out by the builder seem anticipated. In this one, 

 the beech, we have not merely the tall and erect pillar, smooth, except 

 for odd cavities, depressions, and knobs ; but in well-developed indi- 

 viduals, those singular groupings of erect branches which wear the 

 semblance of clustered columns, and by and bye give out from their 

 summits, gracefully sweeping arches that seem the ribs of a roof of air. 

 The smoothness of the bark fits the beech, more than any other tree, 

 for the carving of letters and inscriptions, which, though distorted in 

 the course of a few years, and eventually quite lost, by the gradual 

 expansion and decay of the outer portion, are for a while as clear and 

 sharp as if cut in stone. How beautiful and how ancient are the 

 associations of this practice ! " There is a man," exclaims one of 

 Shakspere's immortal characters, "There is a man haunts the forest, 

 that abuses our young trees, carving Rosalind on their barks." Twenty- 

 five centuries before then lived Paris and CEnone, the former that 

 famous youth who, bred among old Priam's shepherds, and tending his 

 flocks upon mount Ida, was suddenly called to adjudge the prize of 

 beauty among the goddesses. Venus persuaded him with the promise 

 of the finest woman in the world to wife, and for the sake of Helen, 

 poor (Enone was forsaken. Till that ill-fated hour, from which dated 

 the overthrow of Troy, and all the incidents and fables that are 

 embosomed in the greatest poems of antiquity, CEnone and Paris had 

 been playmates and lovers. Gone from her for ever, now she writes 

 him one of those tender and moving epistles which Ovid has preserved 

 for us as the "Letters of the Heroines," reminding him of the happy 

 days when they were partakers in the same amusements, and when he 

 had been used to carve her name on the bark of trees. 



Incisoa servant a te mea nomina fagi ; 



Et legor CEnone falce notata tua. 

 Et quantum trunci, tantum mea nornina crescnnt ; 



Crescite, et in titulbs surgite recta rneos ! 



"The beeches still preserve my name, carved by your hand, and 

 ' (Enone, ' the work of your pruning- knife, is read upon their bark. 

 As the trunks increase, the letters still dilate ; they grow and rise as 

 testimonies of my just claim npon your love ! " If the remembrance of 



