THE BEAUTIFUL IN A TREE. 291 



trees, is based on a feeling that trees, growing quite in the natural 

 way, must be capable of some amelioration by art ; and as pruning 

 is usually acknowledged to be useful in developing certain points in 

 a fruit tree, a like good purpose will be reached by the use of the 

 knife upon an ornamental tree. . But the comparison does not hold 

 good since the objects aimed at are essentially different. Pruning 

 at least all useful pruning as applied to fruit trees, is applied for 

 the purpose of adding to, diminishing, or otherwise regulating the 

 fruitfulness of the tree ; and this, in many cases, is effected at the 

 acknowledged diminution of the growth, luxuriance and beauty of 

 the trees so far as spread of branches and prodigality of foliage go. 

 But even here, the pruner who prunes only for the sake of using the 

 knife (like heartless young surgeons in hospitals), not unfrequently 

 goes too far, injures the perfect maturity of the crop, and hastens the 

 decline of the tree, by depriving it of the fair proportions which na- 

 ture has established between the leaf and the fruit 



But for the most part, we imagine that the practice we complain 

 of is a want of perception of what is truly beautiful in an ornamen- 

 tal tree. It seems to us indisputable, that no one who has any per- 

 ception of the beautiful in nature, could ever doubt for a moment, 

 that a fine single elm or oak, such as we may find in the valley of 

 the Connecticut or the Genesee, which has never been touched by 

 the knife, is the most perfect standard of sylvan grace, symmetry, 

 dignity, and finely balanced proportions, that it is possible to con- 

 ceive. One would no more wish to touch it with saw or axe (unless 

 to remove some branch that has fallen into decay), than to give a 

 nicer curve to the rainbow, or add freshness to the dew-drop. If any 

 of our readers, who still stand by the pruning-knife, will only give 

 themselves up to the study of such trees as these trees that have 

 the most completely developed forms that nature stamps upon the 

 species, they are certain to arrive at the same conclusions. For the 

 beautiful in nature, though not alike visible to every man, never 

 fails to dawn, sooner or later, upon all who seek her in the right 

 spirit. 



And in art too no great master of landscape, no Claude, or 

 Poussin, or Turner, paints mutilated trees ; but trees of grand and 

 majestic heads, full of health and majesty, or grandly stamped with 



