THE TREES OF AMERICA. 



"Father, thy hand 

 Hath reared these venerable columns, thou 

 Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down 

 Upon the naked earth, and forthwith rose 

 All these fair ranks of trees. They in thy sun 

 Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze, 

 And shot towards heaven. The century-liking crow, 

 Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died 

 Among their branches, till, at last, they stood, 

 As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark, 

 Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 

 Communion with his Malter." — Betant. 



No one, it seems to us, who possesses the least spark of intelligence, can look 

 abroad upon the works of nature, without being struck with the fact that the 

 design of the All-wise Father was to address us more directly, and to impress 

 us more powerfully, through the testhetic, or sense of the beautiful, than by any 

 other means. All his works are clothed with beauty as with a garment, as if to 

 conceal their utility, in the usual acceptation of that term, in order to make us 

 forget that sordid appreciation of them, which is too common with us all. He 

 might have given us fruit, without first clothing the trees in a robe of beauty 

 and of joy. He might have given us conr and grain, without their successive 

 stages of beautiful development. Pie might have given us rain and sunshine, 

 without every moment, during the solemn march of the ages, presenting new 

 pictures in the earth and sky. He might have given us trees and plants, and 



