THE MISLETOE. 
VISCUM ALBA. 
“ Not far away, for ages past had stood 
An old, in violated, sacred wood; 
Whose gloomy boughs, thick interwoven, made 
A chilly, cheerless, everlasting shade : 
There barbarous priests some dreadful power adore, 
And lustrate every tree with human gore; 
The pious worshippers approach not near, 
But shun their gods, and kneel with distant fear. ” 
From time immemorial trees, either standing apart in 
solitary majesty, or congregated in groves and forests, 
have been consecrated to the solemnities of religion. 
“ Paradise itself,” says Evelyn, “ was but a kind of 
nemorous temple, planted by God himself, and given to 
man.” This appropriation of them to sacred purposes 
may be traced even in the patriarchal ages. Abraham, 
we are told, “ planted a grove in Beer-sheba, and called 
there on the name of the everlasting God.” It was 
in a bush, or, as some commentators render it, a grove, 
that the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses “ in the 
wilderness of Mount Sinaiand when the same glo- 
