With every thing fair, or sweet, or exquisite in this world, it has seemed meet to that wisdom which appoints our sorrows, and sets a bound to our enjoyments, to affix some stain, some bitterness, or some alloy, which may not inaptly be called, in figurative language, a thorn. St. Paul emphatically speaks of a "thorn in the flesh," and from this expression, as well as from his earnestness in having prayed thrice that it might be removed, we conclude it must have been something particularly galling to the natural man. We hear of the thorn of ingratitude, the thorn of envy, the thorn of unrequited love-indeed of thorns as numerous as our pleasures; and few there are who can look back upon the experience of life, without acknowledging that every earthly good they have desired, pursued, or attained, has had its peculiar thorn. Who has ever cast himself into the lap of luxury, without finding that his couch was strewed with thorns? Who has reached the summit of his ambition without feeling on that exalted pinnacle that he stood on thorns? Who has placed the diadem upon his brow, without perceiving that thorns were thickly set within the royal circlet? Who has folded to his bosom all that he desired of earth's treasures, without feeling that bosom pierced with thorns? All that we enjoy in this world, or yearn to possess, has this accompaniment. The more intense the enjoyment, the sharper the thorn; and those who have described most feelingly the inner workings of the human heart, have unfailingly touched upon this fact with the melancholy sadness of truth. tude or joy. I speak of the thorn which accompanies these pleasures not with murmuring or complaint. I speak of the wounds inflicted by this thorn with a living consciousness of their poignancy and anguish; because exquisite and dear as mere earthly pleasures may sometimes be, I would still contrast them with such as are not earthly. I would contrast the thorn and the wound, the disappointment and the pain which accompany all such pleasures as are merely temporal, with the fulness of happiness, the peace, and the crown, accompanying those which are eternal. THE POETRY OF TREES. IN contemplating the external aspect of nature, trees, in their infinite variety of form and foliage, appear most important and conspicuous; yet so many are the changes which they undergo from the influence of the sun and the atmosphere, that it would be useless to attempt to speak of the associations belonging to this class of natural productions abstractedly, and detached from collateral circumstances. What poet, for instance, would describe the rich foliage of the summer woods, without the radiance of the summer sun; the wandering gale that waves their leafy boughs; the mountain side to which their knotted roots are clinging; the green valley where they live and flourish, safe from raging storms; and the murmuring stream, over which their branches bend and meet. There is, however, a marked distinction in the character of different trees, and a general agreement amongst mankind in the relative ideas connected with each Far be it from one who would not willingly fall under the stigma of ingratitude, to disparage the nature, or the number of earthly pleasures-pleasures which are spread before us without price or limitation, in our daily walk, and in our nightly rest-particular species. pleasures which lie scattered around our path when we go forth upon the hills, or wander in the valley, when we look up to the starry sky, or down to the fruitful earth -pleasures which unite the human family in one bond of fellowship, surround us at our board, cheer us at our fire-side, smooth the couch on which we slumber, and even follow our wandering steps long-long after we have ceased to regard them with grati It is scarcely necessary to repeat how essential to our notions of perfection is the beauty of fitness-that neither colour, form, nor symmetry, nor all combined in one object, can command our unqualified admiration without adaptation; and that the mind, by a sort of involuntary process, and frequently unconsciously to itself, takes note of the right application of means, and the relation of certain causes with their na throw of empires, the destruction of thrones, and the scattering of multitudes-while the laws and religion of half the world have been revolutionized, and what was once deemed a virtue has gradually become punishable as a crime-while sterile wastes have been reclaimed, and fertilized, and made fruitful, by the power and industry of suc tural effects. Thus, we admire the stately pine upon the mountain, not merely because the eye is gratified by a correspondence between its spiral form pointing upward towards the sky, and the high projecting pinnacles of rock, unbroken by the steps of time; but because we know that in consequence of this particular form, it is peculiarly adapted to sustain without injury the tem-cessive generations of men, and arts and pestuous gales which prevail in those inhospitable regions where it chiefly grows. There is something fierce, bristling, and defensive, in the very aspect of the pine; as if it set at naught the hollow roar of the tempest through its scanty foliage, and around its firm unshaken stem, while it stands like a guardian of the mountain wilds, armed at all points, and proudly looking down upon the flight of the eagle, and the wreaths of wandering clouds that flit across the wilderness of untrodden snow. But plant a single pine upon the gentle slope of a green lawn, amongst lilachs, and laburnums, and tender flowering shrubs, the charm of association is broken, and the veteran of the rugged mountainous waste is shorn of his honours; like a patriot chief, submitting himself to the polished chains of society at the court of his tyrant conqueror. The oak, the monarch of the woods, presents to the contemplative beholder innumerable associations by which his mind is plunged into the profound ideas of grandeur, space, and time. We are first struck with the majestic form and character of this tree-the mass of its foliage, the depth and extent of its shadow, and the tremendous power of resistance bodied forth in its gnarled and twisted boughs; but above all other considerations connected with it, we are affected almost with reverence by the lapse of time required to bring those prodigious branches to perfection, and the many, many tides of human feeling that must ebb and flow, before those firmly knotted roots shall yield to the process of decay. In the natural course of meditation to which such a subject leads, we consider the striking truth, that while nations have bowed and trembled beneath successive tyrants until by the wonted course of nature, the terrors of the oppressed have given place to the reckless desperation that works its way, by the over commerce have wrought wonders which our unsophisticated forefathers would have pronounced miraculous-the same oak has stood, perhaps at one time the witness of Druidical rites, at another affording shelter to the simple and unlettered peasant tending the herds of swine that fed upon its falling acorns: until, years rolling on, revolving summers crowning its brow with verdant beauty, and hoary winter scattering that beauty to the winds, have left it for our warning, an emblem of fallen majesty—its once sturdy boughs no sooner attacked by the worm of destruction within, than assailed, and torn, and broken by the merciless blast without. Striking and magnificent as the oak unquestionably is in its peculiar attitude and growth, presenting at one view the combined ideas of ability to resist the strong, and power to defend the weak, it is yet scarcely less majestic than beautiful. What a combination of gorgeous hues its autumnal foliage displays! The eye of the painter revels in its sombre glory, its burnished hue, and its wild fantastic garniture of green and gold, contrasted with its own hoary stem, and the depth of shadow that is thrown by the rays of the declining sun in lengthening gloom over the quiet earth. Nor is it merely with the outward aspect of this tree that our most powerful associations are connected. In a nation perpetually exulting in her maratime supremacy, we have learned to regard the oak as forming a sort of bulwark for the defence of our liberties. Thus, the British sailor calls upon his comrades by the proud title of “hearts of oak," and England is not unfrequently described as being protected by her "aaken walls." There are, besides these, many other characters or points of consideration, in which we regard the oak with feelings of respect, and sometimes with poetical interest. Perhaps it is not least in the scale of importance, that many ancient and stately apartments, dedicated to solemn or religious purposes, are lined with panels of the wood of this tree. The same wood, beautifully carved and deepened into gloomy magnificence by the sombre influence of time, forms one of the principal ornaments in many religious houses; and when we look back to the customs of our ancestors, and the station which they occupied, with that respect which we naturally feel for their boasted hospitality, good cheer, and substantial magnificence, we seldom fail to surround them in imagination with goodly wainscoting of oak, to place a log of the same wood upon the blazing hearth, and to endow them with powers both mental and bodily, firm, stable, and unbending as this sturdy tree. Amongst the trees of the forest, the elm may very properly be placed next in rank to the oak, from its majestic size and importance. Yet the elm has a very different character, and consequently excites in the contemplative mind a different train of associations and ideas. The massive and umbrageous boughs, or rather arms of the elm, stretching forth at right angles with its stately stem, present to the imagination a picture of calm dignity rather than defensive power. From the superficial manner in which the roots of this tree are connected with the earth, it is ill calculated to sustain the force of the tempest, and is frequently torn from its hold and laid prostrate on the ground by the gale, whose violence appears to be unheeded by its brethren of the forest. In painting, or in ideal picture-making, we plant the elm upon the village green, a sort of feudal lord of that little peopled territory; or in stately rows skirting the confines of the dead, where the deep shadow from its dark green foliage falls upon the quiet graves, and the long rank grass, and on the village church, when from her gray sides and arched windows she reflects the rays of the setting sun, and looks, in her silence and solemnity, like a sister to those venerable trees. There are no gorgeous hues in the foliage of the elm, no light waving, dancing or glistening amongst its heavy boughs. All is grave majesty; and when we see the smoke of the cottage slowly ascending, and clearly revealed against the sombre darkness of the elm, we think of the labourer returning to his evening meal, the birds folding their weary wings, the coo of the wood pigeon, the gentle fall of evening dew, the lull of winds and waves, the universal calm of nature, and a thousand associations rush upon us, connecting that lovely and untroubled scene with vast and profound ideas of solemnity and repose. To the willow belongs a character peculiarly its own. It has no stateliness, or majesty, or depth of shadow, to strike the senses and set the imagination afloat; but this mournful tree possesses a claim upon our attention, as having become the universal badge of sorrow, fancifully adopted by the victims of despair, and worn as a garland by the broken-hearted. It has also a beauty and a charm of its own. It carries us in idea to green pastures, and peaceful herds that browse in deep meadows by the side of some peaceful river, whose sleepy waters, silently gliding over their weedy bed, seem to bear away our anxious and conflicting thoughts along with them. Seated by the rude and ancient-looking stem of this tree, we listen to the soft whispering of the wind among its silvery leaves, and gaze upon the glassy surface of the slowly moving stream, just rippled here and there by a stray branch projecting from the flowery bank, or a fairy forest of reeds springing up in spite of the ceaseless and invincible flow of that unfailing tide. We gaze, until the precise distinctions of past, present, and future fade away-the ocean of time flows past us like that silent river (would it were as unruffled in its real course ;) and while retaining a dim and mysterious consciousness of our own existence, we lose all remembrance of its rough passages, all perception of its present bitterness, and all apprehension of its future perils. From such unprofitable musings, if too frequently indulged, we awake to a melancholy state of feeling, of which the willow has by the common consent of mankind become emblematical. Morbid, listless, and inactive, we shrink from the stirring necessities of life; we behold the happy flocks still feeding, and almost wish, that like them we could be content with a rich pasture, as the bound of our ambition-like them live, die, and be forgotten. The dreamy silence of those low damp fields increases our melancholy, and the pale and mournful aspect of the willow, prematurely hoary, becomes an emblem of our own fate and condition. It grows not erect and stately like the stern elm, or bold and free like the waving ash, but stooping obliquely over the stream, or, shrinking from its companions with distorted limbs, tells to the morbid and imaginative beholder, a sad tale of early blight, or the rough dealing of rude and adverse winds. The loiterer still lingers, loath to leave a spot where one bitter root may yet remain unappropriated. He listens while he lingers, and thinks he hears the willow whispering its sorrows to the passing gale. The gale blows more freshly, and the willow then seems to sigh and shiver with the newly awakened agonies of despair. Thus can the distorted eye of melancholy look on every object with a glass of its own colouring, and thus it is possible one of our most common and unimportant trees, naturally growing in the familiar walks of man, in the small enclosure near his door, the green paddock or the luxuriant meadow, may have acquired by the sanction of feeling, not of reason, its peculiar character as an emblem of sorrow and gloom. The weeping willow, as being more gracefully mournful, might very properly have claimed that attention which has been given to the common and plebeian members of its family; but the weeping willow, while it has in this country fewer natural associations, is burdened and robbed of its poetic character by a great number of such as are neither natural nor pleasing. Could we think of this elegant and picturesque tree only in its most appropriate situation, drooping over the tomb of Napoleon, or could we have beheld this tomb itself, without its infinitely multiplied representations in poonah and every other kind of painting, we might then have enjoyed ideas and sensations connected with it of the most touching and exquisite nature. But, alas! our first failure in drawing has been upon the dangling boughs of the weeping willow; our first sonnet has been addressed to this pathetic tree; our first flourish in fancy needle-work has depicted a white urn delicately stitched with shining silk, and long green threads suspended over it, in mockery of its drooping branches. But above all, we have seen in the square ells of garden fronting those tall thin dwellings about town, where a squeezed and narrow neighbour jostles up on each side, leaving just room enough for a tin verandah, but no space to breathe or move, still less to think or feel;—we have seen, laden with a summer's dust, the countless little stunted weeping willows that throw aloft, as if in search of purer air, their slender, helpless arms, and would weep, if they could, yea, cry aloud, at this merciless malappropriation of their defenceless beauty. These impressions must therefore necessarily be obliterated, and others, less vulgar and profane, be deeply impressed upon the mind, before the weeping willow can be established in that rank which it deserves to hold amongst objects whose general associations are poetical.* Turning from the consideration of such trees as belong to the forest, the field, or the grove, to those which are reared and cultivated for domestic purposes; we find, even here, a world of ideas and associations, which, if not highly poetical, are fraught with the satisfaction of home comforts, and the interest of local attachments. In travelling through a fertile country, thickly peopled, not with the haggard, rude, or careless-looking labourers at the loom, but with a quiet and peaceful peasantry, whose delight is in the gardens, the fields, and the flocks which their fathers tended before them, how beautiful, in the season of their blossom, are the numerous orchards, neatly fenced in, and studding the landscape all over with little islands of rich promise, where the brightest tints of the rose, and the fairest of the lily, mingle with odorous perfume in all the luxuriant profusion of nature! Again, when the harvest is over, and the golden fruit, perfected by a summer's sun, is suspended in variegated clusters from every bough, how delightful is the contemplation of that rural and picturesque scene!-how sweetly the ideas it presents to the mind are blended with our love of nature and natural enjoyments, and our gratitude for the bounty and goodness of a gracious Providence. Descending to the class of inferior trees, or rather plants, our poetical associations increase in proportion as these are more picturesque, graceful, or parasitical; and consequently, are more easily woven into the landscape, either real or imaginary, which forms the subject of contemplation. Amongst such, the common wild heath is by no means the least important; nor are we, on first consideration, aware for how large a proportion of our admiration of mountain scenery we are indebted to the rich purple hue which is thrown by this plant over the rugged sides of the hills, otherwise too cold and stony in their aspect to gratify the eye. With the idea of the heath we connect the path of the lonely traveller, or the silence of untrodden wilds; the haunt of the timid moor fowl, the hum of the wandering bee, or the gush of unseen water in the deep ravines of the mountains, working its way amongst the rocks, through moss, and fern, and matted weeds, until at length it sparkles up in the clear sun-shine, and then goes dancing, and leaping, yet ever murmuring, like a pleased but fretful child, on-on towards the bosom of the silent lake below. But above all other vegetable productions, neither trees nor flowers excepted, the ivy is perhaps the most poetical. And why? not merely because its leaves are "never sere," nor because it hangs in fanciful festoons, glittering yet gloomy, playful yet sad; but because it does what so few things in nature will do-it clings to, and beautifies the ruin -it shrinks not from the fallen column-it covers with its close embrace the rugged face of desolation, and conceals beneath its rich and shining mantle the ravages made by the hand of time-the wreck which the tempest has wrought. Besides this highly poetical idea, which forces itself upon every feeling mind, the ivy has other associations, deeply interesting in their character. It requires so many years to bring it to the perfection necessary for those masses of foliage, and dark recesses of mysterious gloom, which its most pictu resque form presents, that we naturally connect with this plant the ideas of solemnity which are awakened by reflecting on the awful lapse of time. The ivy, too, is chiefly seen upon the walls of religious houses, either perfect or ruinous, where its heavy clusters of matted leaves, with their deep shadow, afford a shelter and a hiding place for the bat and the owl, and, in the ideas of the irrational or the too imaginative, for other less corporeal beings that flit about in the dusky hours of night. Thus, the ivy acquires a character of mystery and gloom, perhaps, even more poetical than that which strikes us when we see its glittering sprays glancing in the clear light of day, or waving in the wind around the gray turrets of the ruin, and suggesting that simile which has been so frequently the poet's theme, of light words and jocund smiles assumed by the broken-hearted to conceal the withering of the blighted soul. It would be useless to proceed farther with this minute examination of objects, to each of which a volume of relative ideas might be appropriated. A few examples are sufficient to prove, that with this class of natural productions, the great majority of minds are the same in their associations. Would it might prove something better than a mockery of the loveliness of nature, thus to examine its component parts, and ask why each is charming! Far more delightful would be the task of expatiating upon the whole, of roaming at will upon the hills and through the woods, and embracing at one view, in one ecstatic thought, the unspeakable harmony which reigns through the creation. The pine, the oak, and the elm, may be magnificent in themselves— the willow, the heath, and the ivy, may each present a picture to the imagination; but what are these considered separately, compared with the ever-varying combination of form and colour, majesty and grace, presented by the forest, or the woodland, the sloping banks of the river, or the leafy dell, where the round and the massive figures are broken by the spiral stem or the feathery foliage that trembles in the passing galewhere the hues that are most vivid, or most delicate, stand forth in clear contrast from the depths of sombre shade-where every pro |