THE ASH-TREE. 161 



furnish, and decorate the earth with tall trees in no 

 slight measure for this identical and especial pur- 

 pose. 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 ; contemplat- 

 ing 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 be- 

 coming what are inconsiderately called " weeping,"-* 



