Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1854-08-28
Price Two Cents.
GBe 4ailp spp,
MONDAY. AUGUST %. 1854.
From the Independent, 18th.

/ Henry ward BeecheF ON trees
| Every one who has read the life of Sir WAL
ter Scott, knows his love of trees. He used
to say that of ali his compositions, he was
the most proud of his compositions to make
trees grow. There is yet at East Hampton,
hourishing in a hearty age, an orchard set out
by the hands of my father. And we have
heard him say that after an absence from
home the first impulse, after greeting his
own family. was to go out and examine each
tree in his orchard from root to top. No man
that has ever planted a tree, or loved one, but
knows how to sympathize with this feeling.
Oliver Wendell Holmes spends his summer
months upon beautisul farm, near Ptts6eld,
on which are half hundred acres of the orig
tn0I forest trees, some of them, doubtless, five
hundred years old trees that heard the rev.
olutionary cannon, Cor heard of them,) aud,
before that, the crack of the rifle, in early
Colonial Indian wars, when Miahcomo, with
his fugitive Pequots, took refuge in the Berk-
shire hills. 1t is said that Or. Holmes has
measured with tape line every tree on his
place, and knows each one of them with init
mate personal acquaintance.
To the great tree-loving fraternity we be-
long. And our first excursion in Lellox was
to salute our notable trees. We had a ner.
vous anxiety to see that the axe had not hewn,
nor the lightning struck them; that no worm
had gnawed at the root, or cattle at the trunk;
that their branches were not broken, nor their
leaves falling from drought. We found them
all standing in their uprightness. They lifted
up their heads towards Heaven, and sent down
to us. from all their buughs leafy measure .
of recognition and affection. Blessed be the
dew that cools their evening leaves, and the
rains that quench their daily thirst May the
storm be az merciful to them, when in winter
it roars through their branches, rs is harper
of his harp Let the snow lie lightly on their
boughs, ard long hence be the summer that
shall hud no leaves to clothe these mobiles of
the pasture First in our regard, as it is first
in the whole nobility of trees, stands the white
elm; no less esteemed because it is an Amer
lean tree, known abroad only by importation,
and never seen in all its magnihcence except
i'll our own valleys. The old oaks of England
are very excellent in their way, gnarled and
rugged. The elm has strength as significant
as they, and grace, a royalty which leaves
the oak like a boor in comparison. Had the
elm been an English tree, and had Chaucer
seen, and loved, and sung it, and even, Shaks-
peare, and every English poet hung some gar
lands upon it, it would have lifted up its head
now, not only tho noblest Of all growing
things, but enshrined in a thousand rich as
soclations hi history and literature. Who ev-
er HeeS haWtnorn OF sWeet-Drlar, tune
eglantine,) that hin thoughts do not, like
bolt OF light. burst through the ranks OF poets,
and ranges of sparkling thoughts which have
been born since England had written Ian
guage, and of which the rose, the willow, the
eglantine, the hawthorn, and scores of other
vines and trees have been the cause, as they
are now ami forever the suggestions and re-
membrancers.
Who ever looks upon an oak, and does not
think OF navles; OF storms; of battles on the
ocean OF the noble lyrics of the sea; of
English glades; of the fugitive Charles, the
tree mounted monarch ofthe Herne oak; of
parks and forests; OF Robin Hood and his
merry men, Frar Tuck not excepted; of old
baronial halls with mellow light streaming
through diamond-shaped panes upon oaken
floors, and of elaborate carved wainscotingss
And who that has ever travelled in English
second-class cushionless cars has not other
and less genial remembrances of the enduring
solidity OF the iinpervious, uneastic oak: One
such oak have, and only one. yet discover
ed. On my west line IS fringe of forest,
through which PUSHES IN spring, trickles in
early summer, and dies out entirclyin August,
the issues of noble spring from near the hill
SIDE On the eastern edge OF this belt of trees
stands the monarchal oak, wide branching on
the east toward the open pasture and the free
hght, but on us western side lean and branch
less from the pressure OF the neighboring
trees; for trees, like men, cannot grow to the
real nature that is IN them, when crowded by
too much society. Both need to be touched
on every side by sun and ar, and by nothing
else, II they are to be rounded out into full
symmetry Growing right up by its side,and
through Its branches, is long witely elm
beauty and grace emoosomed by strength
!. iher leaves come and go together, and all
the summer long they mIngle their rusthng
harmohies. ihelr roots pasture IN the same
soil, nor could either OF them be hewn down
without tearing away the branches and mar
ring the beauty OF the other. And a tree,
when thoroughly disoranched, may, by time
ana care, regain Its health again, but never its
beauty
upon the crown Oh the hll' Just where an
artist would nave planted them, had he wished
to have them exactly IN the right place, grew
some TWO hundred stalwart and ancient ma
liAe lore9'' Iorinile screen from tne north
eril ana western WIS us ~ " inter, ana narp