Yet
Even Where They Grew Most Thickly They Were Not To Be Thought Of As A
Wood, But As A Herd Of Stalwart Individuals; And The Dome Of Each Tree
Stood Forth Separate And Large, And As It Were A Little Hill, From Among
The Domes Of Its Companions.
They gave forth a faint sweet perfume which
pervaded the air of the afternoon; autumn had put tints of gold and
tarnish in the green; and the sun so shone through and kindled the broad
foliage, that each chestnut was relieved against another, not in shadow,
but in light.
A humble sketcher here laid down his pencil in despair.
I wish I could convey a notion of the growth of these noble trees; of how
they strike out boughs like the oak, and trail sprays of drooping foliage
like the willow; of how they stand on upright fluted columns like the
pillars of a church; or like the olive, from the most shattered bole can
put out smooth and youthful shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins
of the old. Thus they partake of the nature of many different trees; and
even their prickly top-knots, seen near at hand against the sky, have a
certain palm-like air that impresses the imagination. But their
individuality, although compounded of so many elements, is but the richer
and the more original. And to look down upon a level filled with these
knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old unconquerable chestnuts
cluster 'like herded elephants' upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise
to higher thoughts of the powers that are in Nature.
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