The council-fire, the bivouac, and the camp-meeting acquire, from their sylvan locality, an impressive character; and some of the railways of America intersect vast tracts of forest, where the whistle of the engine startles wild beasts in their lair, and the traveller's glance pierces interminable vistas of trees, and recoils from dizzy precipices, clothed with the undergrowth of years. The sensation incident to so instant a transit from a metropolis to the forest, bewilders the imagination, as if a panorama of alternate civilized and savage life were rapidly unfolded to the eye.

With the instinct of tribes, they possess local affinities; some clinging to the hills, others nourished by the loam of the vales; some drawing their peculiar qualities from limestone, some from granite, and others, like the willow, flourish only in moist places. The branches of one species are twisted by the bite of an insect; the form of the leaf in others is modified by age; their physiology is graduated by a scale which begins in a kind of mucilage, and ends in fossil coal, between which extremes what glories and delicacies of vegetable life intervene ! Their very anatomy has in it a spectral grandeur, as is often realized by the traveller on this continent, when he encounters a group of girdled trees stretching their skeleton boughs against the evening sky, and rattling in the autumn wind. The oaks and cedars of the swamps wear a trailing garniture of moss that gives them a look of hoar antiquity, like the gray beards of prophets; and over the bark of others is often woven a vivid garment of emerald moss-the very type of green old age. The power of the roots in upheaving massive rocks is an impressive evidence of latent energy and slowly-accumulated force, and the Laocoön itself is not a more affecting image of life strangled by a subtle brute force than some of the mighty trees of primeval forests perishing in the coils of enormous vines, twisting with inextricable tenacity, like serpents, and crushing out vitality in a deadly embrace. In New South Wales there are trees that bear ligneous fruits; and in Carolina others entirely petrified.

The stones of the persimmon exhibit when divided the embryo tree distinctly formed. The verdant branches that flourish amid the ruined temples of Central America lift fragments of vast size high in the air, in the process of forcing their way through walls and over pediments. The strength of fibre in these monarchs of vegetation is indeed only equalled by their grace of movement and form; the filaments are not less vigorous in root and branch than delicate in leaf and tendril; and in this union of power and beauty, the one latent and the other obvious, partly consists the

singular charm which arborescent nature exercises over the susceptible mind. Trees have a relation to animal life as well as to the elements, and shelter and feed the most timid as well as the noblest creatures, with the hospitality of their generous life. The squirrel leaps amid their boughs; birds perch and sing on every spray; the locust trills his monotonous note amid their world of leaves, through the long summer noons, and the katydid utters its shrill cry in the oppressive air of the sultry night; the tree-toad, with its bark-colored coat, clings to the rugged trunk, to banquet on the insects lodged in its seams; the bee and the humming-bird sip honey from its blooming chalices; the eagle proudly whets his beak on the withered bough; rooks colonize its aged arms, and the night-owl hoots from the hollow trunk, whose phosphorescent gleam signalizes decay. The utility of trees, except when drooping with fruit or yielding grateful shade, is not hinted by their aspect. Their beauty at once appeals to the eye, but their boundless value is realized only by thought. To what an infinite variety of purposes and to what essential comfort does wood minister; and how exquisitely adapted are the different species to every kind of handicraft, art, and domestic economy! Besides its more obvious use as furnishing the means of shelter, food and clothing, the grand results of architecture, machinery and naval armaments, every where proclaim the worth of the forest. There is no more striking fact in English history than that Evelyn's seasonable and eloquent advocacy of the preservation of her timber growth created the invincible fleets of Nelson. The early firesides of America, at which were nursed the heroes and statesmen of the Revolution, borrowed their cheerful and prolonged glow from the hickory; the live oaks of the South furnish the graceful hulls, and the iron-like fibre of the locust the pins that bind together the most graceful craft that float upon the sea; the flexible yet strong oars that bend against the wave and spring firmly back as they drip while suspended, are wrought from the white ash; the chestnut perhaps by the law of compensation, because of its harvest of nuts, which, in the south of Europe, are a substitute for bread among the peasants-snaps too much for fuel, and warps too quickly for furniture, yet, from its durable quality, when exposed to the atmosphere, makes the best fences; the flexibility of the linden fits it for panels; the hard and smooth compactness of the rock-maple is precisely adapted to gun-stocks, and the dark hue and permanent texture of the black-walnut for cornices and mouldings; the soft fragrant cedar seems ordained to hold the crayon of the limner; the yielding, resinous pine, so easy to cut, that sways to the gale with a

gale with a recuperative strength, even in its native array is "like the mast of some tall admiral," which it is destined to become; and the lithe willow to be woven into baskets: the close grain of the box-wood retains the finest touch of the artist's pencil; the gentle willow yields the best charcoal for gunpowder, an emblem of meekness transformed to an elementary destruction; the mahogany is at once the cradle, the convivial board, and the coffin of our race; the yew shaped into bows by the Romans and Saxons is now the funereal tree of their descendants; the spongy trunks of the cabbage-palm sustain the quays of the South, because they remain for years uninjured by water; the cuticle of the white-birch formed the light and graceful canoe of the aborigines; lignum-vitæ is the material for pulleys; ebony for cabinets; and the cabins of our sumptuous packets are brilliant with the bird's-eye and shaded maple; the roots of the field maple are marble and under the lathe reveal delicate forms; it was from the beech that the bowls of hermitages were made in the good old times. The spire that points to heaven, "the old arm-chair," the carved altar piece, the busy spinningwheel, the popping cork, the tan that muffles the steed's tread and tinges the swain's brogan, the bridge that spans the river, the mossy roof, the ingenious toy, the modelling stick which shapes clay into forms of enduring beauty, the keel that ploughs distant seas, and the staff that supports the steps of age, the deck which has never been pressed by a conquered knee, the panel upon which an old master has immortalized name, and the humble lintel worn by the tenants of a cottage, the temple cornice, the Yule toy, the pleasure-boat that wafts the gay, and the desk to which is chained the drudge, the flag-staff that upholds the banner of freedom, the flute that yields aerial melody, and the cross that lowly sorrow plants as an emblem of faith by the grave of the departed, the most familiarly useful utensils, and the most eloquently symbolic objects, are wrought from the substance of trees; and human skill, from the well-aimed blow of the woodman's axe to the most delicate touch of the carver, expends itself with a more versatile efficiency on wood than on all the other materials of art and convenience united.

his

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE OF THE LAST THREE MONTHS.

A Memorial of Hora

tio Greenough. By HENRY T. TUCKER MAN. G. P. Putnam

BIOGRAPHY.

IN the history of American Art, few names occupy a more honorable place than that of the lamented subject of this memoir. Although his power of accomplishment never attained the ideal excellence which haunted his genius through life, he has embodied visions of beauty in undying marble, which will long preserve his memory from oblivion. We are glad to welcome this feeling and tasteful tribute to his character from the pen of a congenial spirit. The volume contains a highly interesting biographical sketch of the sculptor, together with selections from his writings, principally on subjects connected with art, and a variety of appreciative criticisms and poetical effusions, from different admirers of his genius.

& Co.

Greenough was the son of an eminent Boston merchant, and from his earliest childhood was placed in circumstances singularly favorable to his intellectual culture and development. His first manifestations of natural taste showed a decided aptitude for art. His knife, pencil, and scissors were perpetually busy in carving, drawing, and cutting toys, faces, and weapons, for the amusement of his schoolfellows, as well as his own gratification. In this way he soon attracted the attention of his elders, who became interested in his pursuits, and fostered his juvenile efforts with kindly encouragement. A friendly artisan taught him the use of fine tools; a stone-cutter, with a cultivated taste beyond his vocation, showed him how to handle the chisel; plates, casts, and manuals were placed at his command by the keepers of libraries; and physicians were glad to give him access to their anatomical designs and illustrations. At the same time, he exhibited a strong native tendency to the graces of scholarship. His love of the classics amounted almost to a passion. Under their refining influence, he obtained a mastery of language, and a perception of the subtle. and delicate beauties of style, which, combined with his native intensity of feeling and originality of thought, under different

circumstances might have sealed his eminence as an orator or poet.

During his residence at Cambridge, as a member of Harvard College, he made the acquaintance of Washington Allston, which at once ripened into an intimacy that was fruitful of the most genial and elevating influences on his subsequent career as an artist. In Mr. Allston he could not fail to recognzie a master. The dreaming, enthusiastic youth was drawn to the consecrated priest of art, no less by affinity of genius and the mutual worship of the beautiful, than by the remarkable social attractions which made Mr. Allston the idol of every circle in which he moved. The best hours of Greenough's college life were passed in Mr. Allston's company. This intercourse inspired him with new resolutions, while it gave firmness and consistency to his purposes. He derived from it the most elevated ideal of art, a fresh sense of its dignity, and a faith in its great rewards. "A few perhaps of the friends of either yet recall the scene presented on a moonlight evening of summer, when they were the central figures of a charmed group on the piazza; around them the glimmering foliage, dark sward, and bright firmament; the spiritual countenance, long silvery hair of Allston, wearing the semblance of a bard or prophet, and the tall agile figure and radiant face of his young disciple, both intent on a genial theme. Those hours were memorable to the casual auditors, and to Greenough they were fraught with destiny. His nature was essentially sympathetic; example and personal communion taught him infinitely more than books. He required heat as well as light to inform and mould his mind, and the friendship and conversation of such an artist as our great painter, at this most susceptible epoch of his life, could not but give a new impetus and a sanction to his genius."

Towards the close of his Senior year at Cambridge, he left college with the sanction of the Faculty, and embarked for Marseilles. Proceeding to Rome, he took up his residence in that city, and engaged, with characteristic alacrity, in drawing and modelling from life at the Academy, and from the antique at the Vatican. Here he enjoyed the friendship of Thorwaldsen, and formed other artistic relations, which were no less a source of enjoyment than of progress in his vocation. After waiting for some years, in Rome and Florence, for encouragement in the practice of his art, he was cheered by a commission from the great American novelist, Fenimore Cooper, for the execution of a group in marble-the first which ever proceeded from the hands of an American. This was suggested by a painting of Raphael in the Pitti Palace, which contained in the fore