THE PLANE. Ill 



beneath its balmy and luxuriant foliage. Among 

 the numerous acts of eccentricity attributed to 

 Xerxes, this is perhaps the only one which can be 

 dwelt upon with any view of placing his character 

 in an advantageous light, as it at least shows him to 

 have possessed a mind originally alive to the beau- 

 ties of nature, and retaining, in the midst of all 

 his luxury and excesses, sensibility enough to be 

 affected by them. 



Homer mentions a sacrifice under a beautiful 

 Plane tree, xaToj OTTO 7rXaTav/<rr>. The philosophical 

 conversations of Socrates are represented as passing 

 under its shade, and the academic groves, at the 

 very mention of which Plato and his disciples rise to 

 the enamoured fancy, were formed of its branches. 

 The Romans thought their most magnificent villas 

 imperfect unless they were sheltered by the lofty 

 and wide-spreading plane ; and the Turks, who 

 treat it with extraordinary reverence, plant it near 

 their dwellings, under the idea that it sheds a salu- 

 tary influence over the noxious vapours by which 

 the plague is generated. No part of Europe can 

 show such gigantic Planes as those in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Constantinople. They may be esteemed 

 next to the Cedars of Lebanon in dignity and dura- 

 bility. The precise age that the Plane tree will 

 attain, has never been exactly ascertained ; but if 

 we accept the testimony of Pausanias, who lived in 

 the middle of the second century, we shall scarcely 



