378 A COMPARISON OF THE 



degree of soul, and for all trees tha,t are loveable at sight a 

 sympathy of soul with the observer which constitutes their pleas- 

 ing expression ? 



" Nay, doubt we not that under the rough rind, 

 * In the green vems of these fair growths of Earth, 



There dwells a nature that receives delight 

 From all the gentle processes of life. 

 And shrinks from loss of being. Dim and faint 

 May be the sense of pleasure and of pain. 

 As in our dreams ; but haply, real still." 



Sunny cheerfulness, gayety, gloom, sprightliness, rudeness, 

 sweetness, gracefulness, awkwardness, ugliness, and eccentricities, 

 are all attributes of trees as well as of human beings. How do trees 

 convey these impressions without suggesting those attributes which 

 we call soul ? Some trees look sulky, and repel sympathy — the 

 black oak or an old balsam fir, for instance. People never become 

 greatly attached to such trees. Others are warm, and sunny, and 

 deep bosomed, like the sugar maple ; or voluptuous like magnolias, 

 or wide-winged like the oak and the apple tree — bending down to 

 shade and cover, as mother-birds their nests ; — conveying at once 

 a sense of domestic protection. These are the trees we love. The 

 children will not cry when an old Lombardy poplar or balsam fir is 

 cut down ; but cut away an old apple tree, or oak, or hickory, that 

 they have played under, and their hearts will be quick to feel the 

 difference between trees. Some trees look really motherly in their 

 domestic expression. A large old apple tree, 

 ^'I'^l^' Fig. 56, is a type of such trees. All trees that 



spread broadly, and grow low, convey this 

 expression. The white birch is a type, on 

 the other hand, of delicate elegance, and is 

 styled by one of our poets 



" # # * the lady of the woods." 



There are trees (like those women, who, though brilliant in 

 drawing-rooms, are never less than ladies when busy in domestic 

 labors) which are useful and profitable in orchard and forest, but 

 are doubly beautiful in robes of greater luxuriance upon the carpet 



