(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless, it
had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less
elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the
sun warm the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of
winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable
according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into
infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his
service: cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening
oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling
charm: and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility
or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring
uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble
tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to
the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of
summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the
transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or
hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in
entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing, with
variegated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains,
or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest
joy of humanity.

Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good
for food, and for building, and for instruments in our hands, this
race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us,
becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of
our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can
be far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one is
assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has
brought them in his way. It is clearly possible to do without them,