THE OAK. 19 



new departures. The oak is emphatically of this 

 nature, and the absence of any particular visitant 

 renders the grand old hospitality of the oak to the 

 feathered tribes even more noticeable perhaps than 

 did any particular species of bird show preference 

 for it. In the welcome it extends to them, we see 

 over again why the oak should be the king of trees, 

 for herein it corresponds with the princes and patri- 

 cians of human nature, who are the men that possess 

 hospitable minds, giving kindly hearing to all ideas, 

 and a welcome to everything that may hold within 

 it the soul and seed of truth. The ideas and specu- 

 lations, the theories and hypotheses, which float 

 "about the atmosphere of human intellectual life, are 

 to the little world of man just what the birds are to 

 the physical atmosphere ; the wise man gives a 

 courteous ear to all, and leaves it to fools to reject 

 and condemn before they have listened. Nothing 

 is ever got by shutting one's self up in a creed. It 

 is better to have an excess of faith than too little. 

 The Evil One likes no intrenchment better than that 

 which he finds in the incredulities of pride and 

 ignorance. 



Insects are to the oak a supplement so vast, that 

 were the tree to be blotted out, the entomologist 

 would weep. Those lovely creatures that sail on 

 painted pinions, the butterflies, in many kinds, 

 beetles, and a multitude of little creeping things 

 that none but the enthusiast is aware of, flock to it, 



c 2 



