THE OAK, 83 



the cedar and the fir, the vine and the olive, the palm 

 and the fig-, are a portion of the ordinary vocabulary, 

 not mentioned arbitrarily, or as a sportive act of 

 the fancy, but on account of their being the absolute 

 representatives and pictured forms in the temporal 

 world of the high and sacred realities that belong to 

 the invisible and eternal. 



Because of these admirable attributes and charac- 

 ters of trees, we purpose in this series of papers to 

 examine somewhat closely into their nature and life- 

 history, marking out the features and physiognomy of 

 such kinds as belong to our own island, and inquiring 

 into the specialities that give them their several places 

 in art and poetry. For a tree is not merely an oak, or 

 an ash, or an elm. It has qualities for the imagina- 

 tion and the heart, moving men in its own way, and 

 vindicating prerogatives that are peculiar to it. The 

 mind of that man grows up very differently who in 

 his youth is accustomed to contemplate oaks, than 

 that of him whose boyhood is spent near pines and 

 firs. Where evergreen trees prevail, and are a daily 

 spectacle, a very different frame of mind is induced 

 than exists where the branches are leafless throughout 

 the winter. As the stars and planets, from the inac- 

 cessible altitude of their sweet lustre, make the heart 

 great by the contemplation of them ; so, after the 

 same manner, imposing and magnificent trees, whose 

 branches, when we go beneath, seem the clouds of a 



