Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1854-09-23
miscellaneous.
From the independent, Aug. 18th.
HENRY WARD BEECHER ON TREES,

From the Independent, Aug 18th.
HENRY WARD BEECHER ON TREES.
Every one who has read the life of Sir Walter
scott, knows his love of trees. lie use to say that
OF AL his composition, he was most proud of his
compositions to make trees grow. Thoro is
yet at East Hampton, fourishing in n hearty age
an orchard set out hy the Lands of NV father
And we have heard him say, that after an absence
from home, the first impulse, after greeting bis
own family, was to so out and examine each tree
IN ms orchard, frOom root to top. No man that
las ever planted u tree, or loved one, but knows
how 70 sympathise with this feoling. Oliver Wen
dell Homes spends his summer months upon a
beautiful farm, near Pittsfcld, on which arc a half
n hundred acres Of the %origieai forest trees, some
ct them, doubtless, five hundred years old trees
that heard the revolutionary cannon, Tor heard Of.
them and, before. that the crack of the rifle. in
carly Colonial Indian wars, when Miahcomo, with
his fugitive PcQuots, took refuge in the Berkshire
hills. 1t is said that DR.. Holmes has measured
with ~tapc-lino every tree on his place, and knows
each one of them with intimate personal acquain-
trncc.
To TIC grca, tree loving fraternity we belong.
And our first excursion in Icnox was to salute our
notable trees. We had Il nervous anxiety to see
that the axe had not hcwn, nor the lirhtcninr
struck them that no worm had gnawed ut the
root, or cattle Mt the trunk that their branches
were not broken, nor their leaves falling from
drought. We found them all standing i'm their nm
lightncss. They lifted up their heads towards
Heaven, and sent down to us, from all their
boughs, a lcafy measure Of recognition and afec-
ton. Blessed be the dew that co0ls their evening
leaves, and the rim that quench their daily thirst
May the storm nc mcrciful to them. when in win.
ter it roars through their branches, as is a harncr
of his harp! Let the snow lie lightly on thcir
bouShs, ana long hence be the summer that shall
mud no leaves to clOtho these mobiles of the pasturel
First in our regard. as it is first in the whole nobil-
ity of trees, stands the white elm: no less esteem
cd because 1t Is an American tree, known abroad
unly by Importation, and never seen in all its mar
niiicencc except in our valleys. The old oaks of
England are very excellent in their ways, gnnrled
and rugged. The elm has Il strength as sirnif-
cant as they, and n grace, a royalty, which lie lvcs
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, Shakespeare, and
every English poet hung some garlands upon it,
it, would have lifted up its heal now, not only the
nnblcst OF all growing things, but cnshrined in a
thousand rich associations Of history and literature.
who ever sees a hawthorn or n sweot-briar. (the
cglantine.) that his thoughts do not, like q bolt
Of light, burst through the ranks of poets, and
ranges Of sparkling thoughts which have been
born since England had a written language, and
Of which the rose, the willow, the eglantinc, the
hawthorn, and scores Of other vines and trees have
been the cause, as they are now and forever the
suggestions and remembranccs.
Who ever looks upon an oak, and does not think
Of navics of storms of battles on the ocean: Of
English gladcs of the fugitive Charles, the tree
mounted monarch of the Herne oak of parks
and forests of Robin Hood and his merry men,
Friar Tuck not excepted of old barOnial halls with
mellow light screaming through diamond-shaped
pancs upon oaken floors, and Of elaborate carved
waistcoatings? And who that has ever travelled
in English second-class cushionless cars has not
other and less genial remembrance Of the enGur-
ing sOlidity Of the impervious, unelastic oak ?
One such oak | have, and only one, yet discovered.
On my west line is Il fringe of forest, through which
rushes in spring, trickles in early summer, and
dies out entirely in August, the issues of a noble
spring from near the hill side. On the eastern
edge of this belt of trees st. y the ..0uarch,, oak.
wide branching on the east toward the open pas
turc and the free light, but on its western side lean
and branches from the pressure of the ncighbor-
ing trees, fer 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 air, and by nothing else, if they
are to be rounded out into full symmetry. Grow
ing right up by its side, and through its branches,
is a long wifely clm-beauty and grace embosomed
hy strength. Their leaves come and go together,
and all the summer long they mingle their rustling
harmonics. Their roots pasture in the same soil,
nor could either of them be hewn down without
tearing away the branches and marring the beauty
Of the other. And a tree, when thoroughly dis
branched, may, by time and care, regain its health
again, but never its beauty.
Upon the crown of the hill, just where an artist
would have planted tnem, had he wished to have
them exactly in the right Ylace, grew some two
hundred stalwart and ancient naples, heeches,
ashes, and oaks, n narrow belt like forest, forming
Il screen from the northern and western winds in
winter, and a harp of endless music for the Sum-
mer. The wretched owner of this farm, tempted
Of the devil, cut down the whole blessed band and
brotherhood of trees, that he might fill his pocket
with two pitiful dollass a cord for the wood
Well, his pocket was the best part of him. The
iron furnaces have devoured my grove, and their
huge stumps, that stood like gravestones, have
been cleared away, that n grove might be planted
in the same spot, for the next hundred years, to
nourish into the stature and glory of that which is
gone. And, in other places, | find the memorials
Of many noble trees, slain here a hemlock that
carried up its eternal green n hundred feet into
the winter air there Il huge double trunked chest
nut, dear old grandfather Of hundreds of children.
that have for generations dubbed its boughs or
shook its nut laden top and laughed and shouted
as bushels of chestnuts ratified down. Now the
tree exists only as loop-holed posts and weather
Drowned rails. hope the fellow got a silver in
his finger every time he touched the hemlock plank,
or let down the bars made Of those chestnut
rails.
What, then, it will be said, must no one touch a
tree? must there be no fuel, no timber? Go to
the foIeSt for both. There are no individual trees
there, only a forest.