'the inspired shoemaker' with those of the East is not--witness the
often marvellous identity of tone of The Aurora with that of Hermes
Trismegistus. It is worth while in this connection to trace the
influence of Boehme-ism on 'the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany,' on
Anabaptism, and on the _illuminati_ of the ultra Puritans in England,
bringing forth Independent Fifth Monarchy men, George Fox, Flood, Law,
and Pordage. The seeds of this mystical heresy were obscurely
transmitted to New England, which has always had some 'GOD-Smith,' or
Mathias with his 'Impostures,' lurking among the vulgar. I have no doubt
that, through traditional influence at least, a Joe Smith and the
beginning of Mormonism might be found to have a direct descent from the
doctrines of early times.

Let the reader pardon the digression. I am about to speak of the Ash
tree--the successor of the Banyan--which has also its connection with
English popular superstition. However it was, when the wave of Oriental
emigration reached the utmost limits of Northern Europe, it changed its
character with the climate. From a vast pantheism of fire, it became one
of ice and of snow. In the grammar of its mythology, only a little of
the vocabulary was retained, but the grand system of construction
remained on the whole unchanged. There is the same stupendous
ground-plan of a cosmogony founded on a sublime view of the powers of
Nature, and the same exquisitely poetic elaboration of details in the
Edda as in the Sacred Books of India, though the one is illumined by the
burning sun of the tropics, and the other by the Northern Lights of a
winter midnight.

So the children of Odin needed a tree signifying All Creation, All Time,
All Nature, and they chose the Ash. Its picturesque beauty, its
lightness and easy flowing lines, combined with great strength, and at
times with enormous size; its elegant depending foliage and lithe vigor
in its prime, and its gnarled, ancient expression when old, well fitted
it to set forth the extremes of existence. The firm hold of these trees
in the earth, 'their obstinate and deep rooting--_tantus amor terrae_,'
as Evelyn expresses it, gives us a reason why the Ash of their mythology
was fabled to reach down to hell; while its stern vitality, expressed by
Horace, fitted it to be called the tree of life:

'Per damna, per caedes, ab ipso
Ducit opes animumque ferro.'

'By havoc, wounds, and blows
More lively and luxurian