their mind and train of thoughts to the title of the present road, saying with the poet, as they gaze at some monumental trunk,— "Yon gnarled oak, would he could tell Waved in each breeze a sapling bough!" "We cannot penetrate," says Varenne-Fenille, "within the bounds of a great forest of ancient oaks, without being moved; we leave them with regret, and return to them always with fresh pleasure." Pliny describes an immense plane in Lycia, in a beautiful spot near a cold fountain, in which tree there was a kind of chamber like a rocky cavern, so large that Licinius Mutianus, the consul, desired to transmit to posterity the circumstance of his having dined in it along with eighteen persons; the foliage affording them wide couches, screened from every breath of wind. He said that "he was more pleased on hearing from it the sound of the rain pattering upon the leaves, than if he had been seated in a marble hall, with painted walls, and a golden ceiling*." "There was an oak at Keicot, under the shade of which four thousand three hundred and seventy-four men had room to stand," as Plott declares. Damory's oak, in Dorsetshire, was sixty-eight feet in circumference; and the cavity within it was sixteen feet long and twenty feet high. About the time of the Commonwealth, an old man used it for the entertainment of travellers; but the dreadful tempest, in the third year of the last century, shattered this majestic tree. The Shire oak, which stretches its branches into the three counties of York, Nottingham, and Derby, covers nearly seven hundred and seven square yards. Fitting company for men contemplative are still the Cowthorpe oak, near Wetherby; the Baddington oak, in the vale of Gloucester; Wallace's oak, in Torwood; and the Smuggler's oak, in Lord Digby's woods of Sherborne. When the knights of the Teutonic order first came into Prussia, they found an oak, in a forest, of gigantic dimensions, which they took by force and fortified like a castle; and Henneberger mentions, that there was an oak at Oppen, near Konigsberg, so vast in circumference, that one could ride a horse, describing a circle, within the hollow of its trunk t." The chequer elm, still standing, though reduced to a shell, was planted in the days of King Stephen, contemporary in its origin with the heroic struggles * N. Hist. lib. xii. 5. + Cotta, Science Forestière, 5. of Queen Matilda with the Empress Maude, while her husband remained a prisoner in the dark holds of Bristol Castle. The willow, called the abbot's tree, at St. Edmundsbury, is supposed to have beheld that far-famed and ancient monastery when in the zenith of its greatness. Nor is it by such patriarchs alone that the forest itself seems to invite us to contemplation. There is not an acorn that falls which might not suggest it. Hogarth, writing to his friend Ellis, says, "How poor and bungling are all the imitations of art, compared to what we find on the ground! These seed cups, or vases, are an instance. When I see you next, we will sit down, nay, kneel down, if you will, and admire these things." Moreover, the numerical laws of the families of plants, by conducting us into the mysterious obscurity which envelopes all that is connected with their creation, and, in general, that impenetrable veil which conceals from our eyes all that relates to the first creation of trees and plants,-dispose even the wanderer whom scientific thoughts most influence to contemplation. At all events, the whole aspect of a deep wood, and the silence that reigns within it, suffice to change the current of men's thoughts, and suggest a reply when sophists would contradict faith, like that in Shakspeare," you have said; but, whether wisely or no, let the forest judge." I know not whether this observation may not be received as accounting for the esteem with which forests were regarded in ages more disposed to contemplation than these latter times, when they are so little prized. "There is no treasure in the world," says Bernard Palissy, "so precious, nor which ought to be in such esteem, as the smallest nook occupied by trees and plants, though the most despised. I regard them more than mines of gold and silver; and when I consider the value of the least tree or bush, I am astonished at the ignorance of men, who seem at present only to study how to break, cut, and destroy the beau tiful forests which their predecessors preserved with so much care*." But it is with trees as with men; certain epochs are more or less favourable to both. However, let some places be ever so fitting for contemplation, it is certain that the depths of this pass, now so secret, have never been familiar to the crowd of men. 66 There are few," says St. John Climachus, "who attain to the highest erudition, even in secular philosophy; but, I say, there are still fewer who know God according to the true wisdom of rest and quiet f." Joachim de Flores, at the foot of Etna, in the year 1200, fasting and watching for three days and nights, dictated, and he was pale as the leaf of the forest. His disciple wrote down his words: "There are three ages, three sorts of persons among believers; the first called to the work Scal. Pav. xxvii. * Euvres de Palissy, 64. of accomplishing the law; the second, to the labour of the passion; the last, elected for the liberty of contemplation." Nevertheless, these three classes have been from the beginning. Sic volo eum manere donec veniam, tu me sequere, said our Lord, and St. Augustin remarks, "that here were signified the two ways-the active, by Peter; the contemplative, by John.-It may be, indeed, but a few who take what St. Bonaventura calls "the third journey of eternity;" namely, that limpid contemplation of eternal things, by which the human spirit comes to the intrinsic and eternal manor of Jesus; but there are still fewer who remain in absolute ignorance of the impressions belonging to the first stages at least of the road of contemplation; who are conscious of no act but that of hand, insensible to the still and mental parts that do contrive. Some in youth, silently enthusiastic, loving nature, and " poets in every thing but words," had learned to meditate, who, as they advanced, forsook the path, and lost that sweet. A light traveller has sometimes experience that might be related to describe their fate. "In the morning," says one, 66 we obtained a dim and distant view of an immense range of mountains, which are those that bound Castile on the north. The day, however, became dim and obscure, and we speedily lost sight of them. A hollow sound now arose, and blew over these desolate plains with violence." Others discover this road only in the evening of their days. One of these was Father Arnaud Ponce, of the convent of Puch, near Valencia, who, towards the end of his life, wrote a treatise of meditations, on the words of the twentyfourth chapter of Genesis, that Isaac went out into the fields in the evening to meditate." He, being greatly moved by these words, used often to repeat them; and, when asked, why they occurred to him so frequently, he used to say, that they exhibited his own state, who had been converted to the results of contemplation late, and, as it were, in the evening of his life *. This road, then, presents itself more or less to all men. There is no one who does not find himself at moments straying, in thoughtful mood, along it. The frail, the sensual, the poor victims of a mistaken love of pleasure-even the very worst of human kind-know what contemplation is; for, say they, if you will hear the poet representing them "Dreams of ruin Make us keep silence-thus-and thus- "I know very well," says Father Boullanger, the Capuchin, VOL. VI. * Hist. de l'Ord. de la Mercy, 164. L "that one is no sooner in a crowd, or in the great world, than a sadness steals over the mind, and the heart desires retreat; and this is common to all men, to sinners as well as to saints*." If you will hear poets, the Georgian Sultana used to recur to the meditative habits of her first youth "Yet, midst the blaze of courts, she fixed her love Woodmen's songs supply a more familiar example; for we read: "The morning dawn'd on the oaks in the glades of Sherwood forest. How beautiful and sweet is the fragrance of the wild briar! Robin Hood, altho' an outlaw, was often reflective, and when in a pensive mood, Would think of his boyhood's days, the old house, and the old tree." "Leave me, boy, to my meditations," says the Bravo to his servant, in the Antiquary. Thus, all varieties of character meet us occasionally beneath these boughs. Our object, accordingly, must be, as usual, to mark the issues from this road to Catholicity, and to read, as it were, the sign-posts placed along it, which point to the centre in the Church. The first opening which contemplation yields, is effected by a general natural impression of the mysterious character of life's journey, and a sense of its fearful brevity; "for, behold, short years pass away, and I am walking in a path by which I shall not return†:" 66 Stop and consider! life is but a day; +." Man, when thoughtful, feels gratitude for what he has enjoyed, saying, in the words of the sacred page, "I have seen many things by travelling, and many customs of things. Sometimes I have been in danger of death for these things, and I have been delivered, by the grace of God §." Oh, what sweet retrospects can the days of youth supply! Those evening walks through the rocks and thorn-bushes, with friends of one's choice, as upon Clifton Downs, where bramble thickets and wild woods surpass * Les Dix Solitudes, 33. + Job xvi. in charm all that parks and private gardens yield, can still, by memory, warm the heart, and diffuse a light of cheerfulness and love on all things. "There would she oft delighted rove But, as the past, however illuminated with the colours of a golden fancy, will not suffice to content him, he grows sensible, that he must aspire to something happier and more durable than what he has hitherto obtained, while time is evidently about tof ail him. The Protestant poet Marvel expresses the vague apprehensions of this state, saying "But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity." Then, with another poet, he, who is involved in such perplexity, exclaims, remonstrating with time— "I ask not happy years; nor memories Of tranquil childhood, nor home-shelter'd love; What he desires is something that will not thus fail him; something beyond which there will not be that hereafter the prospect of which makes the heart so sorrowful, that the old poet, alluding to but one of its effects, demands "Canst thou think of hereafter? Poor Cleantha, That, without mercy, will destroy thy face; But how is he to obtain that good which will never be past? "Sors tua mortalis; non est mortale quod optas." Alone Catholicity reconciles his wishes with his destiny, and enables him to escape from the region of remorse and death, to |