Thus we may have them in standing armies,
tall and green, lining the streets, and overtopping the houses of
our largest cities; filtering with their wholesome leafage the air
breathed by the people. New Haven and Cleveland are good specimens
of beautifully-shaded towns.

There is a third circumstance in our favor as yet, and of no little
value. The grand old English oak and elm are magnificent trees, in
park or hedge-row here. The horse-chestnut, lime, beech and ash
grow to a size that you will not see in America. The Spanish
chestnut, a larger and coarser tree than our American, reaches an
enormous girth and spread. The pines, larches and firs abound.
Then there are tree-hunters exploring all the continents, and
bringing new species from Japan and other antipodean countries. But
as yet, our maples have never been introduced; and without these the
tree-world of any country must ever lack a beautiful feature, both
in spring, summer and autumn, especially in the latter. Our
autumnal scenery without the maple, would be like the play of Hamlet
with Hamlet left out; or like a royal court without a queen. Few
Americans, even loudest in its praise, realise how much of the glory
of our Indian summer landscape is shed upon it by this single tree.
At all the Flower Shows I have seen in England and France, I have
never beheld a bouquet so glorious and beautiful as a little islet
in a small pellucid lake in Maine, filled to the brim, and rounded
up like a full-blown rose, with firs, larches, white birches and
soft maples, with a little sprinkling of the sumach. An early frost
had touched the group with every tint of the rainbow, and there it
stood in the ruddy glow of the Indian summer, looking at its face in
the liquid mirror that smiled, still as glass, under its feet.

I was much pleased to notice what honor was put upon one of our
humble and despised trees in Burghley House park, as in the grounds
of other noblemen. There was not one that spread such delicate and
graceful tresses on the breeze as our White Birch; not one that
fanned it with such a gentle, musical flutter of silver-lined
leaves; not one that wore a bodice of such virgin white from head to
foot, or that showed such long, tapering fingers against the sky. I
was glad to see such justice done to a tree in the noblest parks in
England, which with us has been treated with such disdain and
contumely. When I saw it here in such glory and honor, and though