cians. We shall not be accused of exclusiveness in our views, if we say that medical schools are too much multiplied, and that the requisitions in some of them are far too low. We would go further: there are not wanting instances of neglect, on this point, in some institutions of the very first reputation in this country. We believe that when the standard of medical attainments shall be raised far above what it is now, and not till then, will our profession be free from the disgrace of a quarrelling and bickering spirit. MEDICUS. TREES. "And this our life, exempt from public haunt, AS YOU LIKE IT. THERE is nothing in nature more noble than a fine old tree, towering above the earth with grand dignity, and receiving the first sunbeam as a radiant crown of jewels upon its head, and the dews of the night, like sprinklings of diamonds amongst its foliage. It has always been a subject of fine thoughts and pleasant associations with me, and I never, as L. E. L. somewhere quaintly says, so sensibly "feel all my finest feelings," as when, in a Summer noon, I lie leisurely along upon the green sward, with a canopy of nature's loveliest network over my head. How prettily LEIGH HUNT describes a seat like this! If I remember it aright, it is something like this :— "Here's the place to seat us, love! Telling us its gentle will. Who, that knows what luxury is, The influences which seem, at these times, to be showered down upon me by every gentle zephyr, are soothing and happy; and even when there floats no breeze among the overhanging branches-when the sultriness of the midsummer pervades the atmosphere, and there breathes around me not even a whisper, and there waves above me not even a single leaf to disturb the deepened hush, there is still a beautiful charm in such a situation. The rays of the sun, which parch the flowers skirting the garden walk, and wither the verdure and blush of the "Lanes so full of roses, And fields so grassy deep," and which turn to golden yellow the harvest that waves upon the hill-side, cannot penetrate here. Never a leaf within my sight is changed from its own bright green, though it hangs so motionless from its bough-never a fountain of that pellucid stream is dried up beneath the sun-for his blaze cannot reach one of the thousand little springs that contribute to its creation, and which send it rippling and murmuring along at my feet. BRYANT, whose muse seems to be the Genius of American Forest-scenery, describes its Spring beauties with exquisite fidelity in the following two or three verses, which I put down here from memory :— When Spring to woods and wastes around The murdered traveller's bones were found, The fragrant birch above him hung Her tassels in the sky, And many a vernal blossom sprung, And nodded careless by. The red-bird warbled, as he wrought His hanging nest o'erhead, And fearless near the fatal spot Her young the partridge led. There is a fine philosophy in Trees, and they have many a tongue to speak it forth audibly and impressively. It is a philosophy which tells of what has been, and sketches the scenes of olden time in beautiful and powerful colors; each leaf has a story, each trunk is a monument of the past. The music which murmurs from every bough is a voice that celebrates the glory, or bewails the departure of by-gone days; and the circles which mark its age at the heart of the trunk, are but so many lessons of life, to teach its fleetness, and to record its instability And there is a sober and religious sanctity in meditating upon green woods. They are full of instruction, and furnish delightful topics for reflection, and consolatory guides to calm, and peaceful, and soothing thoughts, when we would commune with ourselves and be still. BRYANT calls them sanctuaries, and so they are: The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned And spread the roof above them; ere he framed The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect Only among the crowd, and under roofs That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least, Offer one hymn I feel a grief at times, like that with which I might mourn the loss of a faithful friend, when I behold a majestic and ancient tree being levelled to the ground, and all its bright garniture of blossoms and leaves despoiled and trampled in the dust; and I have fancied that the crash which succeeds its mighty fall, was a gush of noble indignation, like that which might burst from a king, when bearded in his own hall. And this reminds me of a paper in the SPECTATOR, wherein is given a translation of a fable by Apollonius, the Greek Poet, concerning the nymphs called Hamadryads, who were supposed by the ancients to preside over trees; and whose fates were supposed to be identified with those of the trees themselves. Of course all who cherished the latter were sure to merit the peculiar favor of the nymphs, whose lives were thus preserved by mortal care. It is a beautiful conceit, and I copy the fable alluded to as a further illustration of it : 66 Rhæcus, observing an old oak ready to fall, and being moved with a sort of compassion towards the tree, ordered his servants to throw in fresh earth at its roots, and set it upright. The Hamadryad, or nymph, who must necessarily have perished with the tree, appeared to him the next day, and, after having thanked him for his kindness, declared herself ready to grant whatever favor he should ask. As she was extremely beautiful, Rhæcus desired he might be honored by the bestowment of her hand in wedlock. The Hamadryad, not displeased with the request, promised to do so, telling him that at an appointed time she would send a bee to him, to apprise him of her readiness to perform her promise. Rhæcus, however, when the faithful messenger-bee came buzzing about his ears, on this errand, forgot the promise of the nymph, and rudely brushed away the bearer of her kind invitation. So provoked was the Hamadryad with her own disappointment and the ill usage of her messenger, that she deprived Rhæcus of the use of his limbs. However, says the story, he was not so much crippled but he made a shift to cut down the tree, and consequently to fell his mistress." And there are the fables of Erisicthon, the. Delphian Grove, and that at Dodona, all of them, with many more, replete with proof of the veneration with which the ancients regarded Trees. I was writing of the destruction of Trees-Who does not remember CAMPBELL's exquisite lines, "The Beech's Petition?" What can be more beautiful than the concluding stanzas ? Thrice twenty Summers I have stood Spare, woodman! spare the Beechen Tree! There is a fine passage in the first chapter of IVANHOE, which I never can forget any more than I can the delight with which I at first read it. I copied it among my "Leaves" then, and from them I have transcribed it, I had well nigh said, an hundred times, and here it is again. What can be more delightful than the idea contained in the first italicised sentence? and the language too-how vivid the picture it has sketched! The scene is beside the river Dove, in merry England, in the time of Richard I.: "The sun was setting upon one of the rich grassy glades of the forest, which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. Hundreds of broad, short stemmed oaks, which had witnessed, perhaps, the stately march of the Roman Soldiery, flung their broad, gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious green sward: in some places, they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun; in others, they receded from each other, forming those long sweeping vistas, in the intricacies of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of sylvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discolored light, that partially hung upon the shattered boughs, and mossy trunks of the trees; and there they illuminated, in brilliant patches, the portions of turf to which they made their way." How charming are those stanzas of Mrs. HEMANS, entitled "The Last Tree of the Forest!" They have always struck me as far superior to the majority of her Poems. The two first of them, comprising the address to the Tree, are remarkably fine : "Whisper, thou Tree, thou lonely Tree, One where a thousand stood! Well might proud tales be told of thee, "Dwells there no voice amid thy boughs, Stillness is round, and noontide glows,- What a rich and fruitful theme for a poet is this! How replete with high and beautiful inspiration-how redolent of the true spirit of genuine poetry! What Tree is there, among all we have loved, and upon each of which our thoughts have rested and still rest with such happy memories, that does not seem ready to tell us some tale of pleasure or of sadnessthat does not seem, while it waves proudly over our heads, as if it had memory of the past, and breath and voice to utter its secrets? I have been a passionate admirer of forests and woody retreats from my earliest days; and I have thrown together many a tribute to their praise, from many a worshipper of their beauty; and I shall close this rambling transcript, by pointing out some of the prettiest of them to your notice, and that of your good readers :— "The leafy hills so calmly lie, There seems no living thing in all the scene, Only that lavish garniture of green, Gold-tinted, where the pine tree tapers high." PERCIVAL. "I remember, I remember the fir trees, dark and high, To know I'm further off from heaven, than when I was a boy." "Many a tall, out-branching tree FAIRFIELD. HOOD. |