The Power of Trees

From The Trees of Old England (1868), by Leo H. Grindon:

For a tree is not merely an oak, or an ash, or an elm. It has qualities for the imagination and the heart, moving men in its own way, and vindicating prerogatives that are peculiar to it. The mind of the man who in his youth was accustomed to contemplate oaks, grows up very differently from that of one whose boyhood was spent near pines and firs. Where evergreen trees prevail, and are a daily spectacle, a very different frame of mind is induced compared with that which exists where the branches are leafless throughout the winter. As the stars and planets, from the inaccessible altitude of their sweet lustre, make the heart great by the contemplation of them; so, after the same manner, imposing and magnificent trees, whose branches, when we go beneath, seem the clouds of a green heaven, have power to ennoble and elevate the soul, such as all who have lived among them are more or less clearly conscious of, and which is totally unpossessed by small ones.