WoodpatJts. 



WOODPATHS. 



Every person is sensitive to the beauty of a natural wood. All can 

 feel the comfort of its shade and protection, the freshness of its per- 

 fumed air, the quiet of its seclusion, and its many pleasant accompaniments 

 of birds, fruits, and wild-flowers. We do not learn by tuition to appreciate 

 these objects : they are adapted not only to our instincts, but they are the 

 real cause of many of the poetic thoughts that imagination suggests to the 

 mind. We feel, while rambling under these lofty trees and over this carpet 

 of leaves and mosses, that nothing which Art has accomplished will compare 

 with the primitive works of Nature. There is no architecture so sublime as 

 that of a forest ; there is no garden like the little paradises that abide here 

 wherever accident has left a dell or a dingle open to the sun ; there is no 

 music like the notes of its solitary birds, no worship so sincere as in these 

 temples, no cloistered solitude so sweet as under these shadowy boughs. 



Yet how much greater are the charms of a natural wood if it be inter- 

 sected by woodpaths ! When a farmer makes a passage for his wagons 

 through a forest, he operates without artistic design, and his work harmo- 

 nizes with Nature. He thinks only of facilitating progress through his 

 land ; for, though he may be alive to all rural sights and sounds, he cannot 

 pause from his labors to do any thing for mere embellishment. He is 

 governed only by his ideas of utility and convenience ; yet the works of 

 decorative Art are tame and prosaic by the side of this rude pathway, which 

 has expelled no wild plant from its habitats, nor a single forest-warbler 

 from his retreats. We experience within it a true sensation of Nature, with 

 a pleasant reminder of simple rural life. It is hallowed by its humble 

 purpose of utility, by its freedom from artifice, by its perfect resignation to 

 the care of Nature and chance, by its beauty without adornment. 



The woodpath becomes henceforth the avenue to all the delights of the 

 'season. It introduces us to the productions of the forest under their most 

 interesting aspects. The trees that spread their branches overhead shelter 

 it from cold and heat, and permit thousands of beautiful shrubs to grow 

 there that would be fatally crowded in a dense wood. Multitudes of 

 flowers appear continually in its borders, one host following another in glow- 



