Art Out-of -Doors 



green, or form so eccentric as to be hardly 



normal — as in the case of fasti giate or of 

 weeping trees. A tree is sturdy-looking or 

 graceful chiefly by reason of its form ; but 

 such degrees of sturdiness as may be ex- 

 pressed by the words severity, sombreness, 

 majesty, picturesqueness, and such degrees 

 of grace as are called fragility, weakness, 

 delicacy, lightness — these spring in very 

 large part from the texture of its foliage. 

 Small leaves, and especially those which are 

 small and elongated, or small and quivering, 

 do more than a light color to give a tree a 

 fragile aspect, a feminine kind of grace, 

 while large and simple leaves almost of 

 themselves imply a masculine air, and large, 

 simple, and thick-textured leaves mean a 

 certain majesty even in a plant so small that 

 we call it a shrub. 



A small magnolia, for example, has more 

 dignity than the biggest honey-locust. A 

 catalpa is more masculine-looking than a 

 willow of even the largest size ; and if we 

 imagine the thin tissue of its leaves ex- 

 changed for a thicker, stiffer tissue, we can 

 easily see how its dignity would be still 

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