rm an accurate judgment upon subjects that
usually attract public attention.

In the gardens of the wealthy, we often see peach-trees and pear-trees
trained against brick or stone walls, to which they are attached by
substantial thongs. These trees are carefully and systematically
trained, and they are trained so as to accomplish certain results. They
present a large surface, in proportion to the whole, to the sun and air;
in addition to the direct rays of the sun, they receive the reflected
and accumulated heat of the walls to which they are fastened; and they
furnish ripe fruit much in advance of trees in the gardens and fields of
the common farmers. Here art and nature, in brick walls, manure, the
germinating power of the peach or pear, and rigid training and pruning,
have produced very good machines for the manufacture of fruit; but for
the full-grown, symmetrically developed tree, or even for the choicest
fruit in its season, we must look elsewhere. And who does not perceive,
if all the trees of the gardens, fields, and forests, were treated in
the same way, that the world would be deprived of a part of its beauty
and glory, and that many species of trees would soon become extinct? Who
would not give back the luscious pear and peach to their native
acritude, rather than subject the highest forms of vegetable life to
such irreverence? And, upon reflection, we shall say that such cruelty
to inanimate life can be justified only as we justify the naturalist who
dexterously and suddenly extracts a vital organ from a reptile, that he
may observe the effect upon that form of animal existence.

But the tree is not to be left in its native state. By culture its
growth is so aided, that it is first and always a tree after its own
kind, whether it be peach, pear, apple, elm, or oak; at once ornamental
and graceful, stately or majestic, according to the germinating
principle which diffuses itself through each individual creation. "For
the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the
ear, after that the full corn in the ear." So in the human heart, mind,
and soul, nature bringeth forth fruit of herself; and it is the work of
schools and teachers to aid nature in developing a full and attractive
character, that shall yield fruit while all its powers are enlarged and
strengthened, as the almond in the peach is not only more luscious in
its fruit, but more graceful in its branches. Culture, in a broad sense,
i