rises, as the gloom of winter deepens, the glory
of evergreen shrub and tree.

The fields are dull russet, the forests are black, each tree seems a
skeleton; all nature, save the evergreen, looks dead. But our mountains
of firs, our hills of pine, our groves of cedar, our thickets of holly,
our cliffs crowned with laurel, full of life, and covered with
unchangeable verdure, keep eternally fresh and beautiful. Then come the
great white silent snowflakes, sailing round and falling gently down,
alighting on trunk, branch, and leaf, and covering and draping the
hills, until they are pure and fair as the hills of Beulah. There is a
dreamlike beauty in an evergreen forest mantled with snow. What words
could tell the purity of coloring, the gracefulness of form of the pine
boughs bending under their white burden of feathery crystals? Especially
is this true of the young and pliant trees in hedgerows and thickets,
and such as are everywhere springing up over the waste and wornout lands
of Virginia.

The old monarch pine stands out like a sculptured column of ebony
against the blue sky. Its umbel top, crowned with white, makes a fitting
capital for a shaft so noble. It is a picture, in and of itself. The
shrubs and young trees, so rich in leaves and verdure, so pliant to the
lines and curves of grace, when happily and picturesquely grouped, are
almost bewilderingly beautiful. Yet perhaps that which contains in
itself the greatest number of the elements of beauty, is the
medium-sized pyramidal tree, be it of spruce, Norway pine, or balsam
fir. It unites at once, in its pyramidal shape, the strength and majesty
of the old, and in its gracefully curved limbs and abundant leaves, the
beauty and freshness of the young tree. When loaded down with a spotless
burden of snow until its limbs are almost ready to break, no pyramid of
art, no monument chiselled by human hands, can hope to approach its pure
and model beauty.

The evergreen itself, however, seems to know no season but spring. In
none other does it appear to change, and even then it casts not off the
old--it only puts on the new in tenderer and fresher beauty! The new
growth of the spruce and fir, the pale yellowish-green tips set in the
dark old background, are exquisitely lovely; nor are the light green
shoots of the white, yellow, and pitch pine much, less beautiful.

Later comes the glory of the laurel bloom, the most beautiful woodflower
in our climate. As the other tr