As I look out from under the bridge, I see an oriel sitting upon a dog-wood tree of my planting. His song drew my eye from the paper. I find it difficult, now, not to take to myself the whole glory of tree, song, and plumage. By an easy delusion, I fancy he would not have come but for the beauty of the tree, and that his song says as much, in bird-recitative. I go back to one rainy day of April, when, hunting for maple saplings, I stopped under that graceful tree, in a sort of island jungle, and wondered what grew so fair that was so unfamiliar, yet with a bark like the plumage of the pencilled pheasant. The limbs grew curiously. A lance-like stem, and, at regular distances a cluster of radiating branches, like a long cane thrust through inverted parasols. I set to work with spade and pick, took it home on my shoulder, and set it out by Glenmary brook, and there it stands to-day, in the full glory of its leaves, having just shed the white blossoms with which it kept holiday in June. Now the tree would have leaved and flowered, and the oriel, in black and gold, might perchance have swung and sung on the slender branch, which is still tilting with his effort in that last cadenza. But the fair picture it makes to my eye, and the delicious music in my ear, seem to me no less of my own making and awaking. Is it the same tree, flowering unseen in the woods, or transplanted into a circle of human love and care, making a part of a woman's home, and thought of and admired whenever she comes out from her cottage, with a blessing on the perfume and verdure? Is it the same bird, wasting his song in the

THE SOCIETY OF TREES.

23

thicket, or singing to me, with my whole mind afloat on his music, and my eyes fastened to his glittering breast? So it is the same block of marble, unmoved in the caves of Pentelicus, or brought forth and wrought under the sculptor's chisel. Yet the sculptor is allowed to create. Sing on, my bright oriel! Spread to the light and breeze your desiring fingers, my flowering tree! Like the player upon the organ, I take your glory to myself; though, like the hallelujah that burns under his fingers, your beauty and music worship God.

There are men in the world whose misfortune it is to think too little of themselves-rari nantes in gurgite vasto. I would recommend to such to plant trees, and live among them. This suggesting to nature-working, as a master-mind, with all the fine mysteries of root and sap, obedient to the call-is very king-like. Then how elevating is the society of trees! The objection I have to a city, is the necessity, at every other step, of passing some acquaintance or other, with all his merits or demerits entirely through my mind-some man, perhaps, whose existence and vocation I have not suggested, (as I might have done were he a tree,)—whom I neither love, nor care to meet; and yet he is thrust upon my eye, and must be noticed. But to notice him with propriety, I must remember what he is what claims he has to my respect, my civility. I must, in a minute, balance the account between my character and his, and, if he speak to me, remember his wife and children, his last illness, his mishap or fortune in trade, or whatever else it is necessary to mention in condolence or felicitation. A man

with but a moderate acquaintance, living in a city, will pass through his mind each day, at a fair calculation, say two hundred men and women, with their belongings. What tax on the memory! What fatigue (and all pro. fitless) to them and him! thoroughfare!" say I.

me!"

"Sweep me out like a foul "The town has trudged through

I like my mind to be a green lane, private to the dwellers in my own demesne. I like to be bowed to as the trees bow, and have no need to bow back or smile. If I am sad, my trees forego my notice without offence. If I am merry, or whimsical, they do not suspect my good sense, or my sanity. We have a constant itching (all men have, I think,) to measure ourselves by those about us.. I would rather it should be a tree than a fop, or a politician, or a 'prentice. We grow to the nearest standard. We become Lilliputians in Lilliput. Let me grow up like a tree.

But here comes Tom Groom with an axe, as if he had looked over my shoulder, and started, apropos of

trees.

"Is it that big button-ball you'll have cut down, sir?” "Call it a sycamore, Tom, and I'll come and see." It is a fine old trunk, but it shuts out the village spire, and must come down.

Adieu, dear Doctor; you may call this a letter, if you will, but it is more like an essay.

LETTER III.

DEAR DOCTOR-There are some things that grow more certain with time and experience. Among them, I am happier for finding out, is the affinity which makes us friends. But there are other matters which, for me, observation and knowledge only serve to perplex, and among these is to know whose "education has been neglected." One of the first new lights which broke on me, was after my first day in France. I went to bed with a new-born contempt, mingled with resentment, in my mind, toward my venerable alma mater. The three most important branches of earthly knowledge, I said to myself, are, to understand French when it is spoken, to speak it so as to be understood, and to read and write it with propriety and ease. For accomplishment in the last, I could refer to my diploma, where the fact was stated on indestructible parchment. But, allowing it to speak the truth, (which was allowing a great deal,) there were the two preceding branches, in which, (most culpably to my thinking,) "my education had been neglect ed." Could I have taken out my brains, and, by sim. mering in a pot, have decocted Virgil, Homer, Playfair, Dugald Stewart, and Copernicus, all five, into one very

small Frenchman-(what they had taught me to what he could teach)-I should have been content, though the fiend blew the fire.

I remember a beggarly Greek, who acquired an ascendancy over eight or ten of us, gentlemen and scholars, travelling in the east, by a knowledge of what esculents, growing wild above the bones of Miltiades, were "good for greens. We were out of provisions, and fain to eat with Nebuchadnezzar. "Hang grammar!" thought I, "here's a branch in which my education has been neglected." Who was ever called upon in his travels to conjugate a verb? Yet here, but for this degenerate Athenian, we had starved for our ignorance of what is edible in plants.

I had occasion, only yesterday, to make a similar remark. I was in a crowded church, listening to a Fourth of July oration; what with one sort of caloric and what with another, it was very uncomfortable, and a lady near me became faint. To get her out, was impossible, and there was neither fan, nor sal volatile, within twenty pews. The bustle, after awhile, drew the attention of an uncombed Yankee in his shirt-sleeves, who had stood in the aisle with his mouth open, gazing at the stage in front of the pulpit, and wondering, perhaps, what particular difference between sacred and profane oratory, required this pains-taking exhibition of the speaker's legs. Comprehending the state of the case at a single glance, the backwoodsman 'whipped together the two ends of his riding-switch, pulled his cotton handkerchief tightly over it, and, with this effective fan, soon raised a breeze