he forest of Mormal, as
it came aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing
less delicate than sweetbrier.

I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the most civil
society. An old oak that has been growing where he stands since before
the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately than the greater
part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and
death, like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking lesson in
history? But acres on acres full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted,
their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings
pushing up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and beautiful,
giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air: what is this but
the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? Heine wished to lie like
Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied with one
tree; but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be
buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate from
oak to oak; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in all the
forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of green spires, so
that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness and dignity. I think I
feel a thousand squirrels leaping from bough to bough in my vast
mausoleum; and the birds and the winds merrily coursing over its uneven,
leafy surface.

Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and it was
but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries. And the rest of
the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind in squalls, until
one's heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding weather. It was odd how
the showers began when we had to carry the boats over a lock, and must
expose our legs. They always did. This is a sort of thing that readily
begets a personal feeling against nature. There seems no reason why the
shower should not come five minutes before or five minutes after,
unless you suppose an intention to affront you. The _Cigarette_ had a
mackintosh which put him more or less above these contrarieties. But I
had to bear the brunt uncovered. I began to remember that nature was a
woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great
satisfaction to my Jeremiads, and ironically concurred. He instanced, as
a cognate matter, the action of the tides, "which," said he, "was
altogether designed for the confusion of canoeists, except in so far as
it was