ce is leaf and what
is light. And when no zephyr stirs, they are at most but a rich tracery
to the forest-windows.

I am again struck with their beauty, when, a month later, they thickly
strew the ground in the woods, piled one upon another under my feet.
They are then brown above, but purple beneath. With their narrow lobes
and their bold deep scollops reaching almost to the middle, they suggest
that the material must be cheap, or else there has been a lavish expense
in their creation, as if so much had been cut out. Or else they seem to
us the remnants of the stuff out of which leaves have been cut with a
die. Indeed, when they lie thus one upon another, they remind me of a
pile of scrap-tin.[1]

Or bring one home, and study it closely at your leisure, by the
fireside. It is a type, not from any Oxford font, not in the Basque nor
the arrow-headed character, not found on the Rosetta Stone, but destined
to be copied in sculpture one day, if they ever get to whittling stone
here. What a wild and pleasing outline, a combination of graceful curves
and angles! The eye rests with equal delight on what is not leaf and on
what is leaf,--on the broad, free, open sinuses, and on the long, sharp,
bristle-pointed lobes. A simple oval outline would include it all, if
you connected the points of the leaf; but how much richer is it than
that, with its half-dozen deep scollops, in which the eye and thought of
the beholder are embayed! If I were a drawing-master, I would set my
pupils to copying these leaves, that they might learn to draw firmly and
gracefully.

Regarded as water, it is like a pond with half a dozen broad rounded
promontories extending nearly to its middle, half from each side, while
its watery bays extend far inland, like sharp friths, at each of whose
heads several fine streams empty in,--almost a leafy archipelago.

But it oftener suggests land, and, as Dionysius and Pliny compared the
form of the Morea to that of the leaf of the Oriental Plane-tree, so
this leaf reminds me of some fair wild island in the ocean, whose
extensive coast, alternate rounded bays with smooth strands, and
sharp-pointed rocky capes, mark it as fitted for the habitation of man,
and destined to become a centre of civilization at last. To the sailor's
eye. It is a much-indented shore. Is it not, in fact, a shore to the
aerial ocean, on which the windy surf beats? At sight of this leaf we
are all mariners,--if not vikings, buccaneers, and f