THE WOODS. 117 



we shall not find a friendship with the old monarchs, 

 or a hint of by-gone days and the life of the frontier. 

 Entering beneath the low-hanging, drooping 

 branches of a beech, we find ourselves at once in the 

 vast cathedral of God's trees long reaches of leafy 

 solitude, airy vistas, beautiful depths of shade, all odor- 

 ous with the scent of blossoms, of decaying forest litter, 

 and of the many other perfumes of the woods. The 

 floor is carpeted with wild flowers, ferns, grasses, and 

 innumerable leaves, with downy couches of moldering 

 veterans as our resting places; the ceiling is of leaf 

 sprays, composing a living, interlacing greenery, soft- 

 ened in the days by dappled flecks and broad bands 

 of mellowing sunlight falling as through stained glass 

 windows among the shadows, and at night mingling 

 with the pale stars and the subdued, gray light of the 

 moon; the walls are of the rough bark of trees, many- 

 colored, differing in hue as the trees are separately 

 tinted, mottled with exquisite lichens, and variegated 

 with equally delicate and beautiful vines coiling about 

 the trunks, all combining thus into the rare old tapes- 

 tries and mural paintings of the woods; the aged boles 

 themselves being the pillars, the supports for this roof- 

 canopy of Nature's architecture, and, springing from 

 them, many tough, strong arches spanning the heavens, 

 upholding in their outspread arms a fine fretwork of 

 twigs; the aisles, the old wood roads, strewn with 

 leaves. What a delightful place it is ! We are ushered 

 in by the praise of many wood voices and the lisping 

 of leaves. Afar off, as in some sylvan cloister, in the 

 dim recesses, one can hear the faintly modulated song 

 of a bird, like a thin, attenuated shred of a human 



