86 THE ASH-TREE. 



finable, flows therefrom as a beautiful corollary. I have often thought 

 that it may have pleased God to furnish and decorate the earth with 

 tall trees in no slight measure for this identical and especial purpose. 

 Timber, or something equivalent to it, might have been caused to 

 exist after the manner of granite and marble : fruits are produced, as 

 it is, mainly by plants of inconsiderable height, so designed, no doubt, 

 in order that their juicy largess shall be reached readily and pleasantly ; 

 all other gifts of vegetation it is quite easy to conceive as producible by 

 herbaceous plants, and how copiously, let the gums, the resins, the 

 dyes, the medicines which the latter yield so profusely, declare on their 

 behalf. All this luxury and munificence is quite conceivable ; yet no 

 such provision would compensate the want of the green stateliness of 

 the Trees. Shade, dignity, the poetry of the past, the delight of the 

 present, the hope and inspiration of ,the future ; all these things come 

 of their glorious tallness ; contemplating which, we are constrained 

 to peer into the heavens. The two most admirable things in living 

 nature, are mankind and the perennial trees ; and the most perfect 

 expression of the beautiful lies in that section of each respectively which 

 we term the feminine, the latter always gaining from graceful stature. 

 It is interesting to observe, at the same moment, that the ash, while 

 so stately in its upright growth, is one of those trees in which the 

 branches most readily assume the pendant position, thus becoming what 

 ' are inconsiderately called "weeping," the true idea being rather that 

 of long tresses, gracefully let down awhile, and calculated to remind us, 

 not of mourning and the disconsolate, but rather of such incidents as 

 when the Lady Godiva 



" Let fall the rippled ringlets to her knee." 



Quite enough of calamity and sadness is inevitable to this temporal world 

 to render it 'unnecessary for man to encourage thoughts and to impose 

 names that shall make it seem more plentiful. The true idea of wisdom 

 s and of religion alike, is cheerfulness ; and our pride and pleasure should 

 be not only to cultivate unbroken gratitude to God for the multitudinous 

 small mercies which we daily enjoy, and to Cherish thankful sensations 

 and ideas ; but at the same time to endeavour to reflect these thoughts 

 and feelings upon the face of nature, seeking and striving to behold 

 gladness in all things, and to gather, in turn, from the pictures set 

 forth in nature, new incitements to the pursuit of what is " lovely and 

 of good report," new impulses to be energetic in right doing, new reason 

 to forsake selfishness as being a thing Utterly unprofitable. It is just 



