292 TREES. 



the wild irregularity of nature in her sterner types. The few Dutch 

 or French artists who are the exceptions to this, and have copied 

 those emblems of pruned deformity the pollard trees that figure 

 in the landscapes of the Low Countries have given local truthfulness 

 to their landscapes, at the expense of every thing like sylvan loveli- 

 ness. A pollard willow should be the very type and model of beauty 

 in the eye of the champion of the pruning saw. Its finest parallels 

 in the art of mending nature's proportions for the sake of beauty, 

 are in the flattened heads of a certain tribe of Indians, and the de- 

 formed feet of Chinese women. What nature has especially shaped 

 for a delight to the eye, and a fine suggestion to the spiritual sense, 

 as a beautiful tree, or the human form divine, man should not lightly 

 undertake to remodel or clip of its fair proportions. 



