are furnished by the trees, we still worship the beneficent
Naiad: we would not remove the drapery of foliage that protects her
fountain, nor drive her into exile by the destruction of the trees,
through whose leaves she holds mysterious commerce with the skies and
saves our fields from drought.

It is in these relations, leaving their uses in economy and the arts
untouched, that I would now speak of trees. I would consider them as
they appear to the poet and the painter, as they are connected with
scenery, and with the romance and mythology of Nature, and as serving
the purposes of religion and virtue, of freedom and happiness, of poetry
and science, as well as those of mere taste and economy. I am persuaded
that trees are closely connected with the fate of nations, that they are
the props of industry and civilization, and that in all countries from
which the forests have disappeared the people have sunk into indolence
and servitude.

Though we may not be close observers of Nature, we cannot fail to have
remarked that there is an infinite variety in the forms of trees, as
well as in their habits. By those who have observed them as landscape
ornaments, trees have been classified according to their shape and
manner of growth. They are round-headed or hemispherical, like the Oak
and the Plane; pyramidal, like the Pine and the Fir; obeliscal, like the
Arbor-Vitae and Lombardy Poplar; drooping, like the White Elm and the
Weeping Willow; and umbrella-shaped, like the Palm. These are the
natural or normal varieties in the forms of trees. There are others
which may be considered accidental: such are the tall and irregularly
shaped trees which have been cramped by growing in a dense forest that
does not permit the extension of their lateral branches; such also are
the pollards which have been repeatedly cut down or dwarfed by the axe
of the woodman.

Of the round-headed trees, that extend their branches more or less at
wide angles from their trunk, the Oak is the most conspicuous and the
most celebrated. To the mind of an American, however, the Oak is far
less familiar than the Elm, as a way-side tree; but in England, where
many

"a cottage-chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged Oaks,"

this tree, which formerly received divine honors in that country, is now
hardly less sacred in the eyes of the inhabitants, on account of their
familiarity with its shelter and its shade, and their ideas of its
usefulness to the human f