278 
A C 0 MPA RIS ON OF THE 
degree of soul, and for all trees that 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 veins 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, 
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 
Fig. <;6. 
