204 
RURAL HOURS. 
trees within their bounds must each bend individually beneath the 
doom of every earthly existence ; they have their allotted period 
when the mosses of Time gather upon their branches ; when, 
touched by decay, they break and crumble to dust. Like man, 
they are decked in li\'ing beauty ; like man, they fall a prey to 
death ; and wliile we admire their duration, so far beyond our 
own brief years, we also acknowledge that especial interest which 
can only belong to the graces of hfe and to the desolation of 
death. We raise our eyes and we see collected in one company 
vigorous trunks, the oak, the ash, the pine, firm in the strength of 
maturity ; by their side stand a young group, elm, and birch, and 
maple, their supple branches playing in the breezes, gay and fresh 
as youth itself ; and yonder, rising in unheeded gloom, we behold 
a skeleton trunk, an old spruce, every branch broken, every leaf 
fallen, — dull, still, sad, like the finger of Death. 
It is the peculiar nature of the forest, that life and death may 
ever be found Avithin its bounds, in immediate presence of each 
other ; both with ceaseless, noiseless, advances, aiming at the mas- 
tery ; and if the influences of the first be the most general, those 
of the last are the most striking. Spring, . A\dth all her wealth of 
life and joy, finds within the forest many a tree unconscious of 
her approach ; a thousand young plants springing up about the 
fallen trunk, the shaggy roots, seek to soften the gloomy wreck 
with a semblance of the verdure it bore of old ; but ere they have 
thrown their fresh and graceful wreaths over the mouldering wood, 
half their own tribe wither and die with the year. We owe to this 
perpetual presence of death an impression calm, solemn, almost 
religious in character, a chastening influence, beyond what we find 
in the open fields. But this subdued spirit is far from gloomy or 
