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,
for the great companionship of the sea and sky are all that sailors
need; and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learn
between dark stone walls. Still if human life be cast among trees at
all, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a
sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the "country,"
in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been
the source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the words
"countryman, rustic, clown, paysan, villager," still signify a rude
and untaught person, as opposed to the words "townsman" and "citizen".
We accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies,
somewhat too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and natural that
country-people should be rude, and townspeople gentle.
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