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street, and that is, that on that very day the New Church doctrines were publicly preached for the first time in the city of Rome. Mr. Strutt, who is present, informs me he has received a letter from his son there, and who states that the Rev. Mr. Worcester, of Boston, U.S., who is now sojourning in Rome, was invited by the American Presbyterian minister to occupy his pulpit on the 23rd of this month, the day on which Mr. Bruce first preached in Cross-street as the minister of the society. I think this coincidence is well worthy of being recorded in our memories as the first time the truths of the New Church have been publicly proclaimed within the walls of modern Babylon."

The remainder of the evening was delightfully spent in social converse, and in listening to the following musical performances:

Song "Thou art lovelier than the coming."-Miss Collins.

Trio-"Just like love."

Song "The banks of the Tweed.”—Mr. J. S. Hodson, jun.

Solo-"The Husbandman," from "The Creation."-Mr. Mattocks.

Quintett "Blow, gentle gales."

Solo on the Flute, Mr. Carte; which being encored, Mr. C. played "O Nanny."
Song-" Auld Robin Gray."- Miss Collins.

Trio-"Hark, the curfew.'

Conclusion.-Trio-" A sweet good night."

The company separated a little after ten o'clock, with the conviction that they had spent the evening in the cultivation of friendly feelings, conscious that they had experienced a sphere of concord and peace, and grateful to the Source of all Good for the benefits they had enjoyed.

The professional friends who favoured the company on this occasion are all members of the Church; they were Miss Collins, Mr. Carte, Mr. Hodson, and Mr. Mattocks; they were assisted by the following members of the choirs of the two London societies:-Mrs. Finch, Miss Williamson, Mr. Brown, Mr. G. Carte, Mr. Finch, Mr. Parkinson, Mr. Roffe, Mr. A. Williamson, and Mr. D. Williamson.

Piano Forte...............Miss Mosley and Miss Penn;

Flute...............Mr. Carte.

Cave and Sever, Printers, Manchester.

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Few things are at once more delightful to the eye, more interesting from their associations, and more richly emblematic to the vision of the mind, than TREES. Forming an immense proportion of the vegetable clothing of our planet, they exhibit the most astonishing diversities of form and aspect, and when uninjured by vicissitude, stand the very embodiments of stateliness and beauty. Their uses are as varied as their looks. Food, medicine, clothing, shelter, are among the benefits which they directly confer; while indirectly may be ascribed to these fine gifts of God the countless blessings which result from commerce and the art of carpentry. Consider them how we will, trees, therefore, present high and perennial claims upon our regard, and commend themselves as eminently entitled to our philosophic scrutiny.

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One of the first facts that strikes the mind when contemplating trees is, that in their vital constitution they closely repeat man; that is to say, in all the phenomena of their existence, in the laws of their development, decay and reproduction, trees shew themselves to be human nature, expressed in a new and different style. Even their structure is, to a certain extent, after the human model. The leaves answer to the lungs and digestive organs; the blossoms and seed-pods imitate all that is required by the institution of sex; they have 'trunks,' arms,' and 'limbs;' and their depending twigs and innumerable foliage copy the locks and ringlets of the head. How graceful are the tresses of the silver birch! How ladylike the whole tree! With the ash, the acacia, and the larch, this charming ornament of the woods repeats N. S. No. 137.-VOL. XII.

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all the delicacy and elegance of the female form; as the horse-chesnut, the oak, the elm, and the plane, present the muscles and sturdiness of the masculine. Withheld from trees are only man's nobler organs, and the spiritual powers of which they are the instruments; and this because like plants and flowers in general, they are destined for a lower sphere of being, and to subserve purposes and uses for which a nature higher than the simply vegetative would render them unfit. In their degree, trees are nevertheless as finished as man himself. For God, though he expresses his ideas in infinite variety, adorns each new utterance in an equal and inexpressible perfection.

The accordance between trees and mankind as to their organic life dates from the first moment of existence. The germs have a similar kind of parentage. In infancy, both are weak, delicate, and incapable of self-support, the new-born plant depending for its nourishment on the matter purposely stored up within the shell of the seed; and feeding on it, as a babe from its mother's bosom, till strong enough to live an independent life. The double structure of the seeds of most plants, so well shewn in the two halves of the almond, bean, and walnut, compared with the dual provision on the part of the mother, completes the parallel. The little leaves as they unfold, and the gradually rising stalk, form in turn, the perfect picture of childhood; and in due course, the shapely stem, spreading its leafy branches to the sun, speaks for itself as the counterpart of adolescence, with its stores of vigour, health, and promise. Hence the destruction of young trees by some untimely fate has furnished the poets in all ages with their most touching figure for the premature death of the young and blooming among mankind. Homer, in the 17th Iliad, furnishes an incomparable example. (53-60.) With the progression of time, the boy becomes the man, and the sapling the noble tree. Both are now in the zenith of their dignity as to form, and qualified to exercise their highest capacities for usefulness, both physical and moral. This is the epoch in tree life which the poets select, accordingly, to illustrate whatever is at once manly, virtuous, and comely. For while there is nothing in the animal creation more admirable than man in the plenitude of his physical powers, exercising at the same moment all his best and noblest capabilities, moral and intellectual, for the good of those around him; so is there nothing in the vegetable world more beautiful and benign than a well-grown, umbrageous tree, moving courteously to the wind. Beautiful, because of its swaying branches, its symmetry, verdure, and perpetual response in play of light and shadow, to the visits of the sunbeams; benign, because it excites in the reflective mind delightful and profitable trains of thought. Who,

when he looks at such trees, but thinks of the similitude of the psalmist ;- Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord; he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water."

The accordance in the periods of decrepitude in man and trees is presented in a twofold manner. There is not only the final decay, at the end of a hundred or a thousand years, but also the annual leaf shedding; and this is far more impressive than the former, because it is the ending of a stage of life of which we have ourselves witnessed the commencement, whereas in the mouldering and fall of an ancient trunk that has stood for centuries, there is nothing to awaken any personal sympathy. It is a change, likewise, so general and so marked, so solemn and so mournful, that as a picture of mortality it forces itself with irresistible power and pathos even on the most uncultivated mind. Hence the 'sere and yellow leaf' has been insensibly incorporated into the language of the multitude, shewing that true poetry need but be uttered, to find a universal response. The same beautiful comparison occurs in the Agamemnon of Eschylus. (79.)

The sweet renewal of the leaves in spring speaks, however, as powerfully as their fall; and this because while in the year's evening we have the image of dissolution, its morning is crowded with the emblems of resurrection and revival. The restoration of hope, gladness, content, and every other emotion of the inner life, after periods of depression, is here pictured in the liveliest beauty :-"I was a lovely tree in thy presence, Oscar, with all my branches round me; but thy death came, like a blast from the desert, and laid my green head low. The spring returned with its showers, but no green leaf of mine arose." (Ossian.) But this is only a small portion of its symbolism. The spring and summer life of trees, is in its highest correspondence, the emblem of regeneration, and one of so striking and beautiful a nature that the Creator would seem to have planted the earth with trees on purpose that the teachings of his Word should be in them pictorially repeated. The opening of the leaves in spring is in this respect like the sprouting of seeds, only with the advantage of its being a renewal of life, instead of a beginning, as growth from the seed is. Here, again, is only a part of this splendid correspondence. For while the trees bud, and the seeds germinate, because the solar light and heat stimulate their latent vitality, the regeneration of man takes rise in the reception of the Lord's Love and Truth into the soul, into which they flow like sunbeams, and to which they are as truly heat and light as their physical counterparts are to the world of matter.

From the circumstances of their variety, elegance, and utility; from

the phenomena also of their development and structure, it is easy to see that in the great volume of natural and spiritual harmonies, trees answer to the faculties, powers, and possessions of the mind. This is in no way inconsistent with the fact of trees being representative of man's animal nature, seeing that man is at once the impersonation of mind, and the only material creature by which it can be possessed. The correspondence is shewn also in the circumstance of trees figuring regeneration. For it is upon our recognition of the Lord as our Saviour and Exemplar, that is, upon our intellectual perception, and thence our imitation of him, that all regeneration rests, both as to commencement and progress. This is the first essential, and it is indispensable to the end. For genuine religion is no matter of mere creed, but a spiritual cultivation and unfolding of our entire mental and moral nature, and until we know what truth is, we cannot practise it. The earlier perceptions in the process are the soul's tender buds and leaves, the enlarged and more exalted ones its blossoms, the highest and maturest its fruits. These last it brings out in act, and thus, like the fruits of the material tree, more for the good of others than its own. The countless multitude of the leaves, flowers, and fruits, represents the innumerable ideas of which the mind is collectively composed. The harmony between the law of the development of our perceptions and that of the vegetable leaves, flowers, and fruits, is in remarkably beautiful keeping. For just as the advanced perceptions are expansions, in discrete degrees, of the earliest and fundamental ones, so are flowers and fruits higher forms of green leaves, separated after the same manner, by discrete degrees. The lilac flower consists of ten such leaves, the laburnum of twenty, the fuchsia of sixteen, the apple of fifty or sixty; their fruits or seed-vessels being formed respectively of two, one, four, and five, interior to the others, and more elaborately moulded. So truly does science for ever illustrate the spiritual, and shew that to test the genuineness of our metaphysics or theology, we have only to compare it with nature.

The word 'tree' actually means mind or intellect, being one of those fine natural metaphors which we use day by day without ever suspecting their significance, or the high and splendid relations on which they rest. Etymologically, "tree" is cognate with treowan, the Anglo-Saxon word for to trust, prove, or verify, and thus to think, have knowledge, or perception of. Treowan still survives in the latter sense, in our word to "trow," i. e., to think, or believe. True, truth, and trust, are sister terms, truth" being that of which we are confidently assured; "trust" that which we entertain from mental conviction. Literally, these things

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