216 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



the ash, the cheerful beech or the feathery juniper, shaded, 

 it may be, by the soft dark verdure of ancient yew-trees, 

 whose venerable trunks were slender saplings in the age 

 when Druids worshipped there. Men live not so on the 

 boundless prairie, where the wolf chases the swift crane, 

 where cloud races after cloud, and the white man wages 

 war against the red man. Free and bold, beyond all 

 others, breathes the mountaineer, bred in the fierce, in- 

 cessant warfare with the rigor of Alpine winters and the 

 dangers of the chamois hunt ; defying all earthly power, 

 he looks down from his lofty home, proud that liberty 

 dwells on mountain-heights, and that the foul breath of 

 the grave does not reach up into the clear blue ether 

 around him. 



The effect is as varied when we take not the whole vast 

 scenery of a landscape, but its more isolated parts. Few 

 will look upon the ineffable beauty and sweetness of 

 flowers, that rich jewelry with which heaven has adorned 

 the bosom of our mother earth, without feelings of ele- 

 vating and refining delight. To him who observes, not 

 with his eyes only, but with his mind intent, his heart 

 alive, there is no resisting their unconscious unfolding, 

 their peaceful, childlike life, their gentle, resigned and 

 hopeful drooping. Who has not in his life also some 

 days of gay and sunny spring, when he loved to look 

 upon flowers as dear to him, full of hope and love, when 

 he felt for them and with them, as they would ever look 

 fondly upward to the clear, blue heaven above, smiling 

 on the sun that cheered them, rising lightly from refreshing 

 rain, never folding up their beauty and sweet fragrance, 



