xcept the irresistible fact that they are not. It is impossible to create a popular name: one might as well attempt to invent a legend or compose a ballad.
Nascitur, non fit.
As the spring comes on, and the changing outlines of the elm give daily a new design for a Grecian urn,— its hue first brown with blossoms, then emerald with leaves,—we appreciate the vanishing beauty of the bare boughs.
In our favored temperate zone the trees denude themselves each year, like the goddesses before Paris, that we may see which unadorned loveliness is the fairest.
Only the unconquerable delicacy of the beech still keeps its soft vestments about it: far into spring, when worn to thin rags and tatters, they cling there still; and when they fall, the new appear as by magic.
It must be owned, however, that the beech has good reasons for this prudishness, and has hereabouts little beauty of figure; while the elms, maples, chestnuts, walnuts, and even oaks, have not exhausted all their store of c
