But counterfeits in arras to her virtue. All that bewitches sense, all that inspires; And when she speaks-oh! then music To entrance, making the wild sea, whose surges So suddenly and strangely, that we are From that time no more ours, but what she pleases!" Truly, if such a testimony be of worth, I for one, as Piniero says, "would not harm a dog that could but fetch and carry for a woman." In this particular instance they contrive, in their own feminine way, without uttering a word of censure or professing even to like a moral lecture, or any thing holy, to undeceive us. Like one of Titian's faces, they do not look downward; they look forward beyond this world. Nor by mingling love's discourse do they think to abuse the strictness of this place, or offer injury to the sweet rest of these interred bones." Ils se réjouissoient tristement," says Froissart of the English," selon la coutume de leur pays." Perhaps we are about to notice an instance of which we need not be ashamed. I think it is a French writer who observes that England's dear, artless daughters are often pleased to visit graves, and near them 66 To meet the welcome face True to the well-known trysting place." The high have illuminated saloons to meet their friends in; the low are content with this pensive spot. That flutters on the bough more light than they, So you see the merry-hearted are sometimes induced to take the road of the tombs to hear whispered archly, while straying through them, something of woman's ways and woman's lore, which imbue our life with affection, developing all the kindly feelings of our nature; to witness proof, perhaps, of woman's love for mothers, which nothing interrupts, since to an absent mother, whether dead or aged, a maiden's thoughts, if she be not of the proud, rich races, that know nothing of this road, will ever recur in such a scene, though it be as here to say with a sweet sigh in what shaded, lovely spot she would wish, when they must part, to place her parent's bones. Thus are the joyous led among the sepulchres to read many lessons, to mark how the earth of sleep is often cast on a front of eighteen springs, to feel that "Youth may revel, yet it must and even to draw the very conclusions that open a way to the centre, "For who is so busye in every place as youth To reade and declare the manifest truth?" There is nothing, therefore, in the name inscribed by the way which forbids us to proceed with spirits as light as any class can boast of to take this road, trodden so frequently by the elastic feet of young and happy people, "With archness smiling in their eye And if the subject at the bottom be very mournful, as no doubt "Those golden threads all women love to wind, And but for which man would cut off mankind." I have only sought to season this book with that which is the salt to keep humanity sweet; or, if such a simile may be permitted, to make it from the beginning to the end resemble the letter S, which is wittily said to be an excellent travelling companion, because it can turn any number of miles into smiles; for, in truth, the readers who come to such pages generally have no Warburtonian disdain for "that part of literature in which boys and girls decide." "The enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever;" and as for the associations which have dictated such passages, why seek to explain them? Some feelings defy analysis. They gleam upon us beautifully," as a great writer says, through the dim twilight of fancy, and yet, when we bring them close to us, and hold them up to the light of reason, they lose their beauty all at once, and vanish in darkness." If on these three last roads there should be more mention 66 66 made of Love and of the amenity of female influence than in the preceding walks through life's enchanted forest, where we had a right, perhaps, to expect more abundantly the romantic varieties arising from the passion which plays so great a part in human life, it should be remembered that there is less danger in such allusions when we are near the sanctuary where the faults of passion are expiated, on the road of that age where its force is weakened, and at that ultimate bourne where it passes into the eternal source of its felicity. Reader, from the first I fear that some have judged these walks too trivial, others too severe. Grant a pardon here; and yet ere long, perhaps, you will perceive what interest Youth and Love have in such scenes, and that those who feel the latter are really the fittest persons to serve for chorus to this tragedy, since such may be entitled what we are about to witness, for what are tragedies but acts of death? and therefore those who take this road along with us are wholly bent to tragedy's discourse. Let us, then, proceed to mark the openings to the centre which are presented on this very ultimate path of the forest which conducts us to the nation of the dead-the ἔθνεα νεκρῶν. To the first of these avenues men may be conducted by a natural repugnance to follow to its end every other path but that one in which the fears incident to nature at the prospect of its dissolution are dissipated, or at least diminished; and that one is found to lead to the centre like all the rest, and to the faith which in every age has delivered mankind from them. Following the remark of an ancient forester, if we may so call an author who has observed the trees with great minuteness, we cannot wonder that our frail flesh should be subject to an early decay, when iron itself turns to corruption. "Obstitit eadem naturæ benignitas," says Pliny, "exigentis a ferro ipso pœnas rubigine, eademque providentia nihil in rebus mortalibus faciente, quam quod infestissimum mortalitati*." The forest at all seasons presents a striking analogy with human life in the images of death which it presents on every side; and what is wonderful, the trees, in the mystic language that none may fathom, are associated with the destiny of mankind, as in the cry of the angel which we hear chanted at All Saints, saying, Nolite nocere terræ et mari neque arboribus quoadusque signemus servos Dei nostri in frontibus eorum." "The trees," says Pliny, "are liable to diseases. Quid enim genitum caret his malis +? Trees," he continues, " are subject, like men, to maladies and death-to influence of the atmosphere, diseases in the limbs, debility of parts, societate hominum quoque cum hominum miseriis. Sometimes even pestilence sweeps over whole tracts of the forest, as over * xxxiv. 40. 66 + xvii. 37. the human race, causing death to certain classes, nunc servitia, nunc plebs urbana vel rustica*." Within the last twelve years a mortality began amongst the young larch-trees. First the tops withered and died, then the ends of the side branches, and so gradually in the course of five years the trees died altogether. The disease has spread now to the older trees, and those of seventy years are now dying in the same manner, whether growing in the finest and deepest or in the most barren and rocky soils, and in those most suited to them. The pestilence exists in Oxfordshire and in the north of England, as also in the south of Scotland. Many endeavours have been made to trace the cause of this mortality, but hitherto in vain. But at all times the trees are subject to diseases. Some of them are traced to insects. There is the bostrichus pinastre, a beetle that dissects the pine; the bostrichus laricis, or beetle that dissects the larch; the bostrichus abietiperda, the beetle that dissects the fir; the phalana noctua piniperda, the owl butterfly of the pine, and many other insects that destroy forest life. Sometimes, all of a sudden, a certain species, which only appeared at rare intervals, and which was regarded as inoffensive, is multiplied prodigiously, and exercises great ravages, as was the case with the lenthredo pine fifteen years before Delamarre wrote, the resinous trees being more exposed to these ravages than others. Forests are subject to many insidious diseases. Like men, they are liable to ende'mic, epidemic, and contagious maladies; to wounds, to hemorrhages, weakness, lethargy, consumption, blotches, leprosy, wens, and deformities. They are subject to accidental and natural disasters, to combustion by the sun, to be dried up by atmospheric causes, to rotting away t. Behold these trunks of trees which lie mouldering on each other by thousands, not indeed returning to earth, for it is proved that the wood does not come from the ground, and, in fact, no one can tell whence it comes, unless it be from the air. Well, that it rots away thus is certain, while young scions sprout up without number from their half-decomposed progenitors. One need not say what all this represents; and yet the death of trees by old age is inexplicable; for their life is maintained by the layer of sap which every year increases the strength of the wood, and nothing ought to disturb this order of nature; so that most scientific foresters are now of opinion that the death of trees must always be ascribed to some accidental causes. Die, however, after certain periods, all sires of the forest must. These majestic trees, whose wrinkled forms have stood age after age, like patriarchs of the wood, must fall and perish. Though no lightnings should ever strike its head, * xvii. 2. + Delamarre, Traité de la Culture des Pirs. and no fierce whirlwind shake its stedfast root, yet must it fall, its leafy tresses fade, and its bare, scattered antlers strew the glade. But this is not all the analogy that exists between the forest and our life; for the natural date is in both anticipated often by artificial causes. For trees that have been wounded some remedies, it is true, are prescribed. Duhamel thus showed that if such wounds are covered with glass before the surface stripped of the bark has time to dry, and then excluded from the action of the atmosphere, a complete cure is effected. More recent experiments by Trécul confirm the fact, and various compositions are prescribed to form cataplasms whereby the wood and bark can be renewed. It is well known, too, that what is termed hemorrhage in trees can be stopped in them as in animals, by means of the same astringents. But man comes into the forest more frequently to effect the death than the cure of trees. The scene is changed! and it is the woodman who has marred it, the trees no longer forming a green labyrinth, but strewing all the ground as so many sylvan corpses that fell before the foe. Hear how the poet describes him: "Alone he works-his ringing blows "No eye his labour overlooks, Forbid by love to leave the young "The woodman's heart is in his work, His lusty knocks "His axe is keen, his arm is strong; The muscles serve him well; But still his lifelong task has been |