tasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of
foliage to shade him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen rain,
that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish
the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage; easily to
be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments
(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless it
had been if harder; useless if less fibrous; useless if less elastic.
Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm
the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter
winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according
to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude
of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service; cold
juice, or flowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil,
preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm;
and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or
force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring
uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble
tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to
the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of
summer streamlet; roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the
transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or
hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in
entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing with
variegated, everlasting films the peaks of the trackless mountains, or
ministering, at cottage doors, to every gentlest passion and simplest
joy of humanity.

46. If ever in autumn a pensiveness falls upon us, as the leaves drift
by in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty
monuments? Behold how fair, how far prolonged in arch and aisle, the
avenues of the valleys, the fringes of the hills! so stately,--so
eternal; the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, the
glory of the earth,--they are but the monuments of those poor leaves
that flit faintly past us to die. Let them not pass, without our
understanding their last counsel and example: that we also, careless
of monument by the grave, may build it in the world--monument by which
men may be taught to remember, not where we died, but where we lived.

47. The Pine. Magnificent! nay, sometimes almost terrible. Other
tre