unrequited love—indeed of thorns as numerous as our pleasures; and few there are who can look back upon the experience of life, without acknowledging that every earthly good they have desired, pursued, or attained, has had its peculiar thorn. Who has ever cast himself into the lap of luxury, without finding that his couch was strewed with thorns? Who has reached the summit of his ambition, without feeling on that exalted pinnacle that he stood on thorns? Who has placed the diadem upon his brow, without perceiving that thorns were thickly set within the royal circlet? Who has folded to his bosom all that he desired of earth's treasures, without feeling that bosom pierced with thorns? All that we enjoy in this world, or yearn to possess, has this accompaniment. The more intense the enjoyment, the sharper the thorn; and those who have described most feelingly the inner workings of the human heart, have unfailingly touched upon this fact with the melancholy sadness of truth.

Far be it from one who would not willingly fall under the stigma of ingratitude, to disparage the nature, or the number of earthly pleasures-pleasures which are spread before

us without price or limitation, in our daily walk, and in our nightly rest—pleasures which lie scattered around our path when we go forth upon the hills, or wander in the vallies, when we look up to the starry sky, or down to the fruitful earth-pleasures which unite the human family in one bond of fellowship, surround us at our board, cheer us at our fireside, smooth the couch on which we slumber, and even follow our wandering steps longlong after we have ceased to regard them with gratitude or joy. I speak of the thorn which accompanies these pleasures not with murmuring or complaint. I speak of the wounds inflicted by this thorn with a living consciousness of their poignancy and anguish ; because exquisite and dear as mere earthly pleasures may sometimes be, I would still contrast them with such as are not earthly. I would contrast the thorn and the wound, the disappointment and the pain which accompany all such pleasures as are merely temporal, with the fulness of happiness, the peace, and the crown, accompanying those which are eternal.

88

THE POETRY OF TREES.

IN contemplating the external aspect of nature, trees, in their infinite variety of form and foliage, appear most important and conspicuous; yet so many are the changes which they undergo from the influence of the sun and the atmosphere, that it would be useless to attempt to speak of the associations belonging to this class of natural productions abstractedly, and detached from collateral circumstances. What poet, for instance, would describe the rich foliage of the summer woods, without the radiance of the summer sun; the wandering gale that waves their leafy boughs; the mountain side to which their knotted roots are clinging; the green valley where they live and flourish, safe from raging storms; and the murmuring stream, over which their branches

bend and meet. There is, however, a marked distinction in the character of different trees, and a general agreement amongst mankind in the relative ideas connected with each particular species.

It is scarcely necessary to repeat how essential to our notions of perfection is the beauty of fitness-that neither colour, form, nor symmetry, nor all combined in one object, can command our unqualified admiration without adaptation; and that the mind, by a sort of involuntary process, and frequently unconsciously to itself, takes note of the right application of means, and the relation of certain causes with their natural effects. Thus we admire the stately pine upon the mountain, not merely because the eye is gratified by a correspondence between its spiral form pointing upward towards the sky, and the high projecting pinnacles of rock, unbroken by the steps of time; but because we know that in consequence of this particular form, it is peculiarly adapted to sustain without injury the tempestuous gales which prevail in those inhospitable regions where it chiefly grows. There is something fierce, bristling, and defensive, in the very aspect of the pine; as if it set at nought the

hollow roar of the tempest through its scanty foliage, and around its firm, unshaken stem, while it stands like a guardian of the mountain wilds, armed at all points, and proudly looking down upon the flight of the eagle, and the wreaths of wandering clouds that flit across the wilderness of untrodden snow. But plant a single pine upon the gentle slope of a green lawn, amongst lilachs, and laburnums, and tender flowering shrubs, the charm of association is broken, and the veteran of the rugged and mountainous waste is shorn of his honours; like a patriot chief, submitting himself to the polished chains of society at the court of his tyrant conqueror.

The oak, the monarch of the woods, presents to the contemplative beholder innumerable associations by which his mind is plunged into the profound ideas of grandeur, space, and time. We are first struck with the majestic form and character of this tree-the mass of its foliage, the depth and extent of its shadow, and the tremendous power of resistance bodied forth in its gnarled and twisted boughs; but above all other considerations connected with it, we are affected almost with reverence by the lapse of time required to bring those pro