Pythian Oracle afterwards enjoined the Corinthians to find out this Tree, and pay divine honours to it, as to a God. The special motive here was to impress the people with an aweful respect for the Mysteries, none being felt for any part of the popular religion.

6

Old Trees, without the aid of an Oracle to consecrate them, seem to have been some of the most natural objects of that contemplative and melancholy regard, which easily passes into superstitious veneration. No longer ago than during the peace of Amiens a Frenchman* describing the woods on the banks of the Senegal, says On éprouve un doux ravissement en contemplant ces nobles productions d'une nature tranquille, libre et presque vierge; car là elle est encore respectée, et la vieillesse des beaux arbres y est pour ainsi dire l'objet d'un culte. Mon ame reconnoissante des émotions qu'elle ressentait, remerciait le Créateur d'avoir fait naître ces magnifiques végétables sur un sol òu elles avaient pu croitre indépendantes et paisibles, et conserver ces formes originales et naïves que

* GOLBERRY.

l'art sait alterer, mais qu'il ne saura jamais

imiter.

Quelques-uns des sites qu'on rencontre etalent les attraits et les grâces d'une nature virginale; dans d'autres, on admire ce que l'âge, de sa plus grande force, peut avoir de plus imposant et de plus auguste; et d'antiques forêts, dont les arbres ont une grosseur et une élévation qui attestent leur grand age, excitent une admiration mêlée de respect; et ces prodigieux végétaux encore verts, encore beaux, après une vie de tant de siecles, semblent vouloir nous apprendre, que dans ces contrées solitaires et fertiles, la nature vit toujours, et ne vieillit jamais.

There are Tribes among the various races in the Philippines who are persuaded that the souls of their ancestors use old trees as their habitations, and therefore it is deemed a sacrilege to cut one down. The Lezgis used to erect pillars under the boughs of decayed Oaks to support them as long as possible; Murlooz is the name which they give to such spurs, or stay-pillars.

The Rector of Manafon, Mr. Walter Davies,

in his View of the Agriculture and Domestic Economy of North Wales, says, "Strangers have oftentimes listened with attention to Gentlemen of the County of Montgomery enquiring anxiously into the conduct and fate of the Windsor Castle, the Impregnable, the Brunswick and other men of war, in some particular naval engagements; and were led to imagine that they had some near and dear relations holding important commissions on board; but upon farther enquiry, found the ground of this curiosity to be no other than that such ships had been partly built of timber that had grown upon their estates; as if the inanimate material contained some magic virtue." The good Rector might have perceived in what he censures, one indication of that attachment to our native soil, on which much of the security of states depends, much of the happiness of individuals, and not a little of their moral and intellectual character.

But indeed the same cause which renders personification a common figure not only with poets and orators, but in all empassioned and

even in ordinary speech, leads men frequently both to speak and act as if they ascribed life and consciousness to inanimate things.

When the Cid Campeador recovered from the Infantes of Carrion, his two swords Colada and Tizona," his whole frame," says the Chronicler," rejoiced, and he smiled from his heart. And he laid them upon his lap and said, “Ah my swords, Colada and Tizona, truly may I say of you that you are the best swords in Spain; and I won you, for I did not get you either by buying or by barter. I gave ye in keeping to the Infantes of Carrion that they might do honour to my daughters with ye. But ye were not for them! They kept ye hungry, and did not feed ye with flesh as ye were wont to be fed. Well is it for you that

ye have escaped that thraldom and are come again to my hands.”

The same strong figure occurs in the Macaronea,

Gaude, Baldus ait, mi brande! cibaberis; ecce

Carnis et sanguis tibi præsententur abunde.

The Greek Captain who purchases a vessel

which he is to command himself, takes possession of it by a ceremony which is called espousing the ship; on this occasion he suspends in it a laurel crown as a symbol of the marriage, and a bag of garlic as a preservative against tempests. In the year 1793, the ship Darius belonging to a Hindoo, or more probably, as may be inferred from the name, a Parsee owner, was run ashore off Malacca by its Commander Captain Laughton to save it from falling into the hands of a French Privateer. The Captain and his Officers when they had thus disappointed the enemy, succeeded afterwards by great exertion and great skill, in getting the vessel off, and brought it safely home to Bombay; where the grateful owner, thinking the Ship itself was entitled to some signal mark of acknowledgement, treated it with a compleat ablution, which was performed not with water, but with sugar and milk.

Our own sailors sometimes ascribe consciousness and sympathy to their ship. It is a common expression with them that "she behaves well;" and they persuade themselves that an