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crust or a delicate mossiness, or a broAvn, orange, yellow, or white 

 star ; a study, of themselves. The lichens which invest the bark 

 of our birches, beeches, maples and some other trees in the interior 

 of the forest, are very curious. They seem, like strange oriental 

 Avriting, to have been formed by a delicate pen or brush, or a still 

 more delicate graver. Such are the opegraphas. Not less 

 beautiful are the finely dotted or stippled lecideas, lecanoras and 

 the star-like parraelias. 



But on thi edge of the forest, where the sun gets in, the 

 climbers arrange themselves, hke a curtain, to shut out the glare 

 of day from the awful silence and sanctity of the deep recesses of 

 the wood. 



Where rather than in the forest are the simplest elements of 

 beauty, — color, form and motion, — to be studied ? In the spring, 

 every tree has its own shade of green, and these shades are 

 changing, day by day and hour by hour, till they pass into the full, 

 deep greens of summer, and thence, in autumn, into the rich reds, 

 yellows, scarlets, crimsons and orange tiiits of the maples, tupelos, 

 oaks and birches, the purples and olives of the ash and beech, and 

 the browns and buffs of the hackmatack, the hickories and the elm. 

 Not only the leaves, but the branches and trunks of all the trees 

 have colors, — neutral tints, of their own. The forms are not less 

 various, nor the motions, from the shivering of the leaves to the sway- 

 ing and balancing of trunks and branches in the wind, — to say nothing 

 of the colors and shapes and motions of birds and other animals best 

 seen in the forest, witli the reflected images in the lakes and the 

 clouds above them. The combination of trees, and their contrasts 

 in shape and character, their position on a plain, or on the slope or 

 summit of a hill ; broad masses upon the side of a mountain, or 

 covering its top, with wide or narrow glades losing themselves in 

 their depths, and the play of light and shadow, in the sunshine or 

 under a cloudy sky ; the interchange of cultivated grounds and 

 wild woods, and the grouping of trees, are circumstances by the 

 study of which the student may be prepared to understand and to 

 enjoy art as exhibited by the painter or the poet, as well as by 

 the landscape gardener. 



Sir Uvedale Price would have us study the works of the paint- 

 ers to form just ideas of the beautiful and the picturesque in scene- 

 ry ; a pleasant study doubtless for those who have the means. 

 But why not rather study the elements of beauty where Claude 

 and Poussin and Salvator Rosa studied, in the forest, by the lake 

 or waterfall, and by the sea ? To the originals or to copies of the 

 great paintings we may not easily find access ; but the originals of 

 the originals arc within reach of all of us. 



Where else but in the forest did Shakspeare get that wild wood 

 spirit which makes us feel the airs and the very sounds of the 



