Or bring one home, and study it closely at your leisure, by the
fireside. It is a type, not from any Oxford font, not in the Basque nor
the arrow-headed character, not found on the Rosetta Stone, but destined
to be copied in sculpture one day, if they ever get to whittling stone
here. What a wild and pleasing outline, a combination of graceful curves
and angles! The eye rests with equal delight on what is not leaf and on
what is leaf,--on the broad, free, open sinuses, and on the long, sharp,
bristle-pointed lobes. A simple oval outline would include it all, if
you connected the points of the leaf; but how much richer is it than
that, with its half-dozen deep scollops, in which the eye and thought of
the beholder are embayed! If I were a drawing-master, I would set my
pupils to copying these leaves, that they might learn to draw firmly and
gracefully.

Regarded as water, it is like a pond with half a dozen broad rounded
promontories extending nearly to its middle, half from each side, while
its watery bays extend far inland, like sharp friths, at each of whose
heads several fine streams empty in,--almost a leafy archipelago.

But it oftener suggests land, and, as Dionysius and Pliny compared the
form of the Morea to that of the leaf of the Oriental Plane-tree, so
this leaf reminds me of some fair wild island in the ocean, whose
extensive coast, alternate rounded bays with smooth strands, and
sharp-pointed rocky capes, mark it as fitted for the habitation of man,
and destined to become a centre of civilization at last. To the sailor's
eye. It is a much-indented shore. Is it not, in fact, a shore to the
aërial ocean, on which the windy surf beats? At sight of this leaf we
are all mariners,--if not vikings, buccaneers, and filibusters. Both our
love of repose and our spirit of adventure are addressed. In our most
casual glance, perchance, we think, that, if we succeed in doubling