106 Gilpin's fokest scenery. 



stem and the robustness of the Umbs, the tree is 

 complete in all its beauty and majesty. 



In these climates, indeed, we cannot expect to 

 see the Cedar in such perfection. The forest of 

 Lebanon is perhaps the only part of the world 

 where its growth is perfect ; yet we may in some 

 degree conceive its beauty and majesty from the 

 paltry resemblances of it at this distance from its 

 native soil. In its youth it is often, with us, a 

 vigorous, thriving plant, and if the leading branch 

 is not bound to a pole (as many people deform 

 their Cedars) but left to take its natural course 

 and guide the stem after it in some irregular 

 waving line, it is often an object of great beauty. 

 But, in its maturer age, the beauty of the English 

 Cedar is generally gone, it becomes shrivelled, 

 deformed and stunted ; its body increases, but its 

 limbs shrink and wither. Thus it never gives us 

 its two leading qualities together. In its youth 

 Ave have some idea of its beauty without its 

 strength, and in its advanced age we have some 

 idea of its strength without its beauty : the 

 imagination, therefore, by joining together the two 

 different periods of its age in this climate, may 



