er, with uncovered brow, silently worships the Hand that
formed them there, scarcely conscious that their presence thus elevates
his mind to holy aspirations. Among them, the speculative man

"Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones."

Even children, born and educated among groves of trees, drink in early
impressions, which follow them for good all their days; and, when the
toils of their after life are passed, they love to return to these
grateful coverts, and spend their remaining days amid the tranquillity
of their presence. Men habituated to the wildest life, too, enjoy the
woods, the hills, and the mountains, beyond all the captivation and
excitement of society, and are nowhere at rest, but when in their
communion.

The love of forest scenery is a thing to be cultivated as a high
accomplishment, in those whose early associations have not been among
them. Indeed, country life is tame, and intolerable, without a taste,
either natural or acquired, for fine landscape scenery; and in a land
like this, where the country gives occupation to so great a proportion
of its people, and a large share of those engaged in the active and
exciting pursuits of populous towns, sigh and look forward to its
enjoyment, every inducement should be offered to cultivate a taste for
those things which make one of its chief attractions. Nor should
seclusion from general society, and a residence apart from the bustling
activity of the world, present a bar to the due cultivation of the taste
in many subjects supposed to belong only to the throng of association.
It is one of the advantages of rural life, that it gives us time to
think; and the greatest minds of whose labors in the old world we have
had the benefit, and of later times, in our own land, have been reared
chiefly in the solitude of the country. Patrick Henry loved to range
among the woods, admiring the leafy magnificence of nature, and to
follow the meandering courses of the brooks, with his hook and line.
Washington, when treading the vast solitudes of central Virginia, with
his surveyor's instruments on his back, conceived the wonderful
resources of the great empire of which he will ever be styled the
"father." The dwelling of the late John C. Calhoun, sheltered by noble
trees, stands on an elevated swell of a grand range of mountain land,
and it was there that his prolific genius ripened for those burning
displays of thought which drew to him