IV. 



TREES IN TOWNS AND VILLAGES. 



March, 1847. 



" rilHE man who loves not trees, to look at them, to lie under 

 JL them, to climb up them (once more a schoolboy,) would 

 make no bones of murdering Mrs. Jeft's. In what one imaginable 

 attribute, that it ought to possess, is a tree, pray, deficient? Light, 

 shade, shelter, coolness, freshness, music, all the colors of the rain- 

 bow, dew and dreams dropping through their soft twilight, at eve 

 and morn, dropping direct, soft, sweet, soothing, restorative from 

 heaven. Without trees, how, in the name of wonder, could we 

 have had houses, ships, bridges, easy chairs, or coffins, or almost 

 any single one of the necessaries, comforts, or conveniences of life ? 

 Without trees, one man might have been born with a silver spoon 

 in his mouth, but not another with a wooden iadle." 



Every man, who has in his nature a spark of sympathy with 

 the good and beautiful, must involuntarily respond to this rhapsody 

 of Christopher North's, in behalf of trees the noblest and proudest 

 drapery that sets off the figure of our fair planet. Every man's bet- 

 ter sentiments would involuntarily lead him to cherish, respect, and 

 admire trees. And no one who has sense enough rightly to under- 

 stand the wonderful system of life, order, and harmony, that is in- 

 volved in one of our grand and majestic forest-trees, could ever de- 

 stroy it, unnecessarily, without a painful feeling, we should say, akin 

 at least to murder in the fourth degree. 



Yet it must be confessed, that it is surprising, when, from the 

 force of circumstances, what the phrenologists call the principle of 



