put in circulation several proverbs. "The empty mill grinds itself," was one of them. It taught that an active mind should be kept supplied with wholesome food for reflection. It taught that one of the woes of thwarted ambition is to wear itself out in self-torture. Alexander, fretted to tears that there was no second world for him to conquer, Napoleon's spirit, chafed to frenzy by confinement at St. Helena, — were empty mills grinding themselves. There was another Attic proverb, owing its origin to the same simple machine, which embraced a volume of ethics in its terrible significance: 'Oè θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά, “ The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind to powder." Every violation of the higher law written on men's hearts is sure to bring suffering. Every great wrong will be one day avenged, in spite of cloud-compelling lawyers, bribed judges, and disagreeing juCrimes, as well as curses, are like chickens, and will come home to roost. If one generation escape the penalty due to its sins, they will be visited upon its successor, so as to verify the Jewish proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge."

ries.

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In their zeal to give some faint conception of the power lodged in wealth, the Anglo-Saxons have commissioned a proverb to announce that "Money makes the mare go." The Greeks had their Roland for this Oliver, and were equally ingenious in their way of confessing faith in the potency of riches. Taking it for granted that the tongue is the most obstinate and untamable of all moving things, they engaged a proverb to proclaim that money can stop the tongue. The Anglo-Saxon must surrender to the Greek. Is it not a harder achievement to arrest the unruly member, than to accelerate the spavined Rosinante? One of the idioms used by the Attics to represent their sense of the might of money, was derived from the image of an ox stamped on their early coinage, "The golden ox crushes the tongue." The law's delay was a marketable commodity. The state's attorney softened his invective, or forgot it entirely, when the wealthy criminal had distributed his persuasives to silence. This item of the popular faith sometimes appeared with a change of raiment, "A golden quinsy stifles the orator."

An attack of this golden quinsy was said to have impeded the utterance of Demosthenes, when he was suspected of having taken a bribe from Harpalus. If a Greek were waylaid by a brigand, and told to surrender his purse or his life, he might reply, with an Attic proverb, " My purse is my life," Χρήματα ψυχὴ βρότοισι; or, more briefly, Χρήματ ̓ ἀνήρ,

"The purse makes the man."

Were we to blame the Greeks for permitting such mercenary maxims to have currency in their midst, for not nailing them to the counter as bogus coin,- half a dozen modern proverbs of like purport would be shaking their fingers at us, and saying, "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." So long as we allow it to be said that "Gold enters every gate but heaven's," some charity is due to the Greeks.

Experience taught the Greeks that this world is a scene of violent changes and contrasts; that life and death walk side by side; that love and jealousy nestle in the same bosom; that to-day's friendship may be to-morrow's hatred. Wishing to put into an emphatic phrase the truth that in the physical, social, and moral world extremes meet, they did it with saying, Κάσις πηλοῦ ξύνουρος διψία κόνις, - " Dry dust is mud's own brother." What could be more expressive, unless it were its counterpart, suggested to the Romans by their large experience with the juices of the vineyard, -"The sweetest wine makes the sharpest vinegar"?

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These illustrations, which might have been largely increased, will help one to decide how far the Vicar of Itchenstoke was right in saying that, "in many and most important respects, the Greek proverbs are inferior to those of many nations of the modern world." Perhaps they will also help to decide how much of conformity and acquiescence is due to the dictum of Chesterfield already quoted. The true gentleman, so far from spurning the homely dialect of the many, will seek to identify his sympathies with theirs, by gathering up whatever is quaintly expressive in their proverbial wisdom, and storing it away among the treasures of his intellect.

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ART. VI. The Trees of America. By R. U. PIPER, M. D. Boston. 1857. Nos. 1, 2.

THERE are some topics which claim periodical notice in the pages of an American quarterly. Not the least important of these is the subject of " American Forest-Trees." In dealing with this subject, our Review has already proved itself faithful, and within a quarter of a century has furnished at least four elaborate essays on this fertile theme. The time is fully accomplished for a return to it. Nine interstitial years have brought it to our perihelion, and the attraction to it is made stronger by the welcome intrusion of the new work which Dr. Piper announces. We are glad of the occasion to say a few words which ought, in due course, to be said at this time. The subject, indeed, does not lack discussion. Agricultural newspapers and reports, the circulars of nursery owners, and frequent articles in the daily journals, all keep the matter sufficiently before the public; yet the few solid treatises that have been published have already become scarce. The translation of Michaux's great work, indifferent and imperfect as it was, has quite disappeared. Browne's "Sylva Americana" has passed out of circulation; and his larger work, on the "Trees of America," which never reached, we believe, its second volume, is hardly known by name to learned librarians. Nuttall's valuable supplement to Michaux, a most curious monument of persevering zeal and enterprise, is now exceedingly rare. Even the comparatively recent Report of Mr. Emerson on the "Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts" is not to be had at the bookstores. The text-books of medical and scientific botany deal only incidentally with the subject.

A new general work on the "Trees of America," therefore, comes to us fresh, and as a sort of surprise. The plan of Dr. Piper's publication, as stated in his prospectus, if less exact than that of previous works, is more comprehensive and attractive. His book is intended to be popular and entertaining, rather than scientific, a book of engravings, with a running practical commentary. The text will be a frame for the pictures, and a pleasant filling up of the intervening

spaces, partly description, partly suggestion, partly historical and critical observation; not by any means, however, for this reason inferior in value to the pictures. Dr. Piper's pictorial illustrations differ from those of other writers of his class in being copies of individual trees, rather than of genera or species. He gives, not merely the likeness of an oak, but of the "Assabet Oak" and the "Charter Oak"; not merely the likeness of an elm, but of the "Avery Elm" in Stratham, and the "Elm on Boston Common"; likenesses not merely of such trees as grow in America, but of famous trees which actually exist in America, and may so be taken as types of their species. These are the several heads of a discourse on the general subject of trees, which is addressed alike to the farmer, the landscape-gardener, and the gentleman owner, to boards of health, railway corporations, and all friends of improvement.

Of Dr. Piper's qualifications for the bold and large task which he has undertaken, we can only say that he has the eye of an artist, the hand of a draughtsman, and the spirit of an enthusiast. His knowledge of trees and their habits is ample, his experience in their management has been equally long and successful, and his love for them amounts to a passion. The labor of preparing such a work is far too slow for his swift desire, yet he will do his task no faster than he can do it well. At the date of our writing, two numbers of the work have been issued, which, as specimen numbers, give a most favorable prophecy of what is to come. Each number contains four engravings and sixteen pages of letter-press, in quarto form, electrotyped on paper as thick as parchment, with wide spaces and ample margin. A more beautiful and fitting dress has been given to no American book. The nicer mechanical labor has been performed by the author, who can etch as skilfully as he sketches, and will intrust his more delicate work to no unpractised hand. The book is not sufficiently advanced to enable us to judge fairly of its literary merits. We can say with safety, nevertheless, that it will be always earnest, always clear, and never dry. The fault which we have most to fear is a redundancy of quotation, by which Dr. Piper's modesty seeks needlessly to justify and fortify his own opin

ions. His own authority is competent, without such help. The work is to be published in quarterly parts, at a subscription price of two dollars a year. We are glad to learn that already a considerable number of subscribers have recorded their names; and we are permitted to add that, by the liberality of a distinguished cultivator and gentleman, Mr. Frederic Tudor, the continuance of the enterprise is guaranteed. It is a labor of love on the part of the author, who asks no profit for himself; but we venture to bespeak for him the assistance of all whose tastes and whose means allow them to become subscribers. We commend especially to close inspection the admirable drawing of the "ash forest" in Maine, which makes the frontispiece to the second number, in which immense difficulties of detail and of light and shade are so beautifully mastered, and which, to our eyes, no photograph could surpass. We have seen other delineations of Dr. Piper, both in surgical anatomy and in natural scenery, which were remarkable, but nothing quite equal to this view. The drawing of the great Winchester Pine-tree is also wonderfully perfect. In the progress of the work, it is intended to include all those trees in this country which have, by their size, their age, their peculiarities, or their associations, any especial claim to notice. In most instances, the engravings will be from sketches taken directly from the tree by Dr. Piper. Occasionally, as in the case of the giant Redwood-tree in California, the sketch must be copied from the work of another hand. The number of parts to which the work will extend, will depend on the health of the author. If his design is carried out, not less than twenty will appear.

This Review,* we think, was one of the first to utter a warning against the wanton waste of our beautiful forests. Already, in a single generation, the good fruits of the reactionary movement are visible, and some of the cleared tracts are clothed anew with woods which the hand of man has planted. The desolation which threatened whole sections of our country has been partially arrested; the Ohio farmer has restored what his father destroyed; and in the new lands of the West there are estates which resemble the parks and

* October, 1832.