TREES AND THE GROWTH OP THE MIND. 5 



fancy, but on account of their being the absolute 

 representatives and pictured forms in the temporal 

 world of the high and sacred realities which 

 belong to the eternal. 



Because of these admirable attributes and cha- 

 racters of trees, we propose in this series of papers 

 to examine somewhat closely into their nature and 

 life-history, marking out the features and physio- 

 gnomy of such kinds as belong to our own island, and 

 inquiring into the specialities which 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 quali- 

 ties for the imagination and the heart, moving men 

 in its own way, and vindicating prerogatives that 

 are peculiar to it. The mind of the man who in 

 his youth was accustomed to contemplate oaks, 

 grows up very differently from that of one whose 

 boyhood was spent near pines and firs. Where 

 evergreen trees prevail, and are a daily spectacle, a 

 very different frame of mind is induced compared 

 with that which exists where the branches are leaf- 

 less throughout the winter. As the stars and planets, 

 from the inaccessible altitude of their sweet lustre, 

 make the heart great by the contemplation of them ; 

 so, after the same manner, imposing and magni- 

 ficent trees, whose branches, when we go beneath, 

 seem the clouds of a green heaven, have power to 

 ennoble and elevate the soul, such as all who have 

 lived among them are more or less clearly con- 



