TREES IN TOWNS AND VILLAGES. 305 



dred church bells. We remember Northampton, Springfield, New 

 Haven, Stockbridge, and others, whose long and pleasant avenues 

 are refreshing and beautiful to look upon. We do not forget that 

 large and sylan park, with undulating surface, the Boston Common, 

 or that really admirable city arboretum of rare trees, Washington 

 Square of Philadelphia.* Their groves are as beloved and sacred 

 in our eyes, as those of the Deo-dar are to the devout Brahmins. 



But these are, we are sorry to be obliged to say, only the ex- 

 ceptions to the average condition of our country towns. As an off- 

 set to them, how many towns, how many villages, could we name, 

 where rude and uncouth streets bask in the summer heat, and revel 

 in the noontide glare, with scarcely a leaf to shelter or break the 

 painful monotony ! Towns and villages, where there is no lack of 

 trade, no apparent want of means, where houses are yearly built, 

 and children weekly born, but where you might imagine, from their 

 barrenness, that the soil had been cursed, and it refused to support 

 the life of a single tree. 



What must be done in such cases ? There must be at least one 

 right-feeling man in every such Sodom. Let him set vigorously at 

 work, and if he cannot induce his neighbors to join him, he must 

 not be disheartened let him plant and cherish carefully a few 

 trees, if only half a dozen. They must be such as will grow vigor- 

 ously, and like the native elm, soon make themselves felt and seen 

 wherever they may be placed. In a very few years they will preach 

 more eloquent orations than " gray goose quills " can write. Their 

 luxuriant leafy arms, swaying and waving to and fro, will make 

 more convincing gestures than any member of congress or stump 

 speaker ; and if there is any love of nature dormant in the dusty 

 hearts of the villagers, we prophesy that in a very short time there 

 will be such a general yearning after green trees, that the whole 

 place will become a bower of freshness and verdure. 



In some parts of Germany, the government makes it a duty for 

 every landholder to plant trees in the highways, before his property ; 

 and in a few towns that we have heard of, no young bachelor can 



* Which probably contains more well grown specimens of different spe- 

 cies of forest-trees, than any similar space of ground in America. 



