much as lend him a horse, though he earnestly begged one at their hands. His enemies were gaining ground upon him, and that was sufficient for them: thus strikingly and affectingly exemplifying the history of the hare and many friends.

VI.

To a native of Jamaica, no luxury is superior to that of walking among the odoriferous groves of pimentos, that adorn the eminences, which form a barrier to the encroachments of the ocean: and the Circassians, long and loudly celebrated for the beauty and cheerful disposition of their women, quit their towns and cities in the summer, and erect tents among their woods and valleys, after the manner of the neighbouring Tartars. Ossian describes his bards, as sitting in a delightful manner. "Beneath his own tree, at intervals, each bard sat down with his harp. They raised the song, and touched the string, each to the chief he loved." To an Hindoo, nothing is more grateful, than to walk among the cool recesses, formed by the arms of the banian-tree; which he esteem an emblem of the Deity himself. Hindoo Bramins, whose placidity of disposition is, in some measure, the natural result of a total abstinence from animal food, reside, for the most part, in their gardens, which they cultivate with their own hands; occupying the remainder of their time in reading, in walking, and in reclining beneath the spreading boughs of trees; which, Du Tertre' insists, Adam lived upon during his residence in Paradise.

1 Histoire Antilles, tom. 2. 140.

The

I could never wonder, though I have heard others do so, that the poets should have feigned the oak to have been originally a sage and a patriarch. Nor could I ever feel surprise at the idea, which a man, who died at Haywood, near Rochdale, in the county of Lancaster, entertained, that if he cut down one of his trees, the others would mourn for the loss of their companion. In consequence of which belief, he never permitted any of them to be cut down. Ovid' and Lucan give fine descriptions of the oak; and the honours which were paid to it. There is, indeed, scarcely a descriptive or an epic poet, that does not find some occasion to do it honour: and Loton, the landscape painter, so much delighted in it, that he contrived to introduce one into all his pictures.

VII.

The use, which the poets have made of trees, by way of illustration, is moral and important. Homer frequently embellishes his subjects with references to them; and no passage in the Iliad is more beautiful than the one, where, in imitation of Musæus, he compares the falling of leaves and shrubs to the fall and renovation of ancient families. Illustrations of this sort are frequent in the sacred writings. "I am exalted like a cedar in Libanus," says the author of Ecclesiastes, " and as a cypress tree upon the mountain of Hermon. I was exalted like a palm tree in Engeddi, and as a rose plant in Jericho; as a turpentine tree I stretched out my branches; and my branches are the branches of honour

and grace. As a vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are the fruits of honour and victory." In the Psalms, in a fine vein of allegory, the vine tree is made to represent the people of Israel: "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cut out the heathen, and planted it. Thou didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with its shadow, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars."

In Ossian, how beautiful is the following passage of Malvina's lamentation for Oscar:-" I was a lovely tree in thy presence, Oscar, with all my branches round me; but thy death came, like a blast from the desert, and laid my green head low: the spring returned with its showers, but no green leaf of mine arose1." Again, where old and weary, blind, and almost destitute of friends, he compares himself to a tree that is withered and decayed. "But Ossian is a tree, that is withered; its branches are blasted and bare; no green leaf covers its boughs; from its trunk no young shoot is seen to spring; the breeze whistles in its grey moss; the blast shakes its head of age; the storm will soon overturn it, and strew all its dry branches with thee, oh Dermid ! and with all the rest of the mighty dead, in the green winding vale of Cona."

Petrarch could never behold an olive tree but his imagination pictured that simile in Homer, where he compares the beautiful Euphorbus, struck by the lance of Patroclus, to an olive, uprooted by a whirlwind ;—

Poem of Croma.

a simile so harmonious, in all its parts, that even Pythagoras set it to music, played it upon his harp, and adopted it for his epicedion.

The Missouri Indians have a tradition1, that their aboriginal ancestors lived in a large village under ground, near a lake; that a grape vine, shooting its root down to them, first let in the light; that some climbed up the vine, and beholding a new land, abounding with buffaloes and every kind of fruit, they invited their wives and children to climb up the vine-root as they had done. Thus they suppose that portion of the earth became peopled. There are, in the history of human error, few traditions more ridiculous than this. It was probably a dream in its origin; and afterwards adopted for belief, because it was the dream of a powerful chieftain. Herodotus3 relates, that Astyages, king of the Medes, having married his daughter to Cambyses, the Persian, dreamed, one night, that a vine, springing from the womb of his daughter, became so exceedingly umbrageous, that it covered all Asia with its shade. This vine being interpreted to mean a grandson, who should supplant him on the throne, Astyages sent for his daughter; and, at the time of her delivery, gave her child into the care of Harpagus, with strict orders to have it destroyed. The manner of its preservation, and the romantic history of Cyrus, who fulfilled the prophecy, is in the animated recollection of every classical reader.

Travels to the Sources of Missouri River. 4to. p. 102.

2 Some of the Guinea coast Negroes believe, that their ancestors came out of the earth, and caverns of marine rocks.-Vid. Bosman, p. 123. ed. 1721. 3 Herod. Clio. cvii. &c.

Analogies are continually presented to us, between trees and sentiments. Phocion, hearing an orator one day promising a number of fine things to the Athenians, exclaimed, "I think I now see a cypress tree! In its leaves, its branches, and in its height, it is beautiful; but, alas! it bears no fruit." Eve declares to Adam', that his conversation was more sweet to her ear, than were the fruits of palm trees to her palate: and Quintilian compares Ennius to a grove, which, sacred from its antiquity, fills the mind with religious awe. Plotinus, says Gassendi, compared the souls of men, emanating from and partaking of the Divine mind, to the leaves, flowers, and fruits, belonging to the body of a tree. Beautiful, too, is the metaphor, and delicate is the flattery, where Horace likens the glory of Cæsar's house to a tree rising slowly from its seed; and after several ages, spreading its branches to the heavens; and then rising with as much dignity in the forest, as Marcellus towered above all other youths. Blair compares a good man to an oak, whose branches the tempest may, indeed, bend, but whose root it can never touch: a tree, which may occasionally be stripped of its leaves and blossoms, but which still maintains its place, and in due season flourishes anew.

These analogies and similitudes are not entirely unobserved by savage nations: of this the speech of the Scythian ambassadors to Alexander is strikingly illustrative. 66 If your person were as gigantic as your desires," said they, "the world would not contain you.

1 Milton.