THE GIANT TREES OF CALIFORNIA.

BY REV. DR. BUSHNELL.

I suppose you will not be offended by a volunteer letter about the big trees of California, which I have just visited, without any engagement to report or thought of reporting to you.

These trees are found high up in the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada, probably four thousand feet above the sea. A stage ride from Stockton of about seventy miles, due east, brings the visitor to Murphy's, a kind of miner's town or camp, where a new and respectable hotel of stone is just finished. From this, a horseback ride, or if preferred a carriage ride, of fifteen miles takes him to the trees. The road is wrought in places, but in most of the way natural and very beautiful. For the first four miles it climbs a deep gorge, down which a heavy cascade of water is tumbling, poured in there by a miner's ditch. And this ditch is followed some miles farther, sometimes appearing farther on winding along the dells, and sometimes leaping across overhead from one hill to another in wooden trunks supported by a tressel work, fifty or a hundred feet high. This, together with a few little squatter taverns under the trees, a sawmill or two, and here and there a fence run round some scoop of moist land in the valleys, and the only inroads made upon the pure naturality of the scenery. It is forest, yet nothing that we mean by forest. There is no undergrowth, scarcely anywhere a rock, the surfaces are as beautifully turned as if shaped by a landscape gardener, and dotted all over by myriads of flowers, more delicate, if not more various, than any garden ever grew. Moving along these surfaces, rounding over a hill, or galloping through some silent valley, winding here among the native oaks casting their round shadows, and here among tall pines and cedars drawing their huge conical shapes on the ground, we seem in fact to be riding through some vast park. Indeed, after we had seen the trees and taken their impression, we could think of nothing but to call it the park of the Lord Almighty. The other trees we observed were increasing in size as we neared the place, till finally, descending gently along a western slope among the files of little giants, we came to the gate of the real giants themselves, emerging into the cleared ground of the Big Tree Hotel between the two sentinels, which are five hundred feet high, and stand only far enough apart for the narrow road to pass between. These were the first of the Washington cedars we have seen -it really seemed that we had never seen a tree before. And yet they were only medium specimens. Close by the house lay the first cut of the Big Tree par eminence; the remaining part or top had been split up and removed. Near this first cut stood the stump, about six feet high, with an arbor mounted on the top, which had been squared down for this purpose, the posts of the arbor standing out in the line of the largest circuit at the ground, and the space between them and the circuit of the top filled in by a floor of short boards. The diameter of the top is by measurement twenty-five feet three inches one way, and twenty

three feet six inches the other. The diameter, at the ground, or between the posts of the arbor, was thirty-one feet. To assist the imagination, the top of the stump was the breadth of a common city half-house, and the bottom was six feet wider! Passing round with Mr. Davis, the intelligent conductor and keeper of the hotel, we made a general survey of the group, and afterwards measured many of them with the tape line. They are all included in a space of fifty acres, and nearly all in ten acres, and are only about ninety in number. The ground occupied is a rich wet bottom, and the foot of the moist northern slope adjacent, covered also with an undergrowth.

And why are they here, just here, and nowhere else? This, I confess, is to me the greatest, strangest wonder of all, that nowhere in the whole earth is there another known example of these Anakins of the forest, ninety seeds alone that have started, ninety and no more. Is there, was

there no other piece of ground but just this, in the whole world, that could fitly take the seeds of such a growth? Why have they never spread, why has no one seed of the myriads they sprinkle every year on the ground, ever started in any other locality?

And what a starting it is, when such a seed of life begins to grow! Little did that tiny form of matter about the size of a parsnip seed, and looking more like that than any other, imagine what it was going to do, what feeling to excite, when it started the first sprouting of the Big Tree! This small parsnip seed going finally to open a road and turn a course of travel for thousands of people! See them when they come, how they gather about in silent awe before a vegetable! the stump of a vegetable!

It will be very difficult for any one, not assisted by actual sight, and even when so assisted, to form a conception, or receive a just impression of these gigantic growths. Even when he is thrilled with the sense of their sublimity he will not take their true measure. We measured an enormous sugar pine recently felled, about a mile before we reached the place. Sixty feet from the ground it was six feet in diameter, and it was two hundred and forty feet high. It really seemed that nothing could be greater. But we applied our measure to one of the prostrate giants, whose dimensions, as it lay upon the ground, we could better take the sense of apart from all definite measures, and found that two hundred and forty feet from the ground it was six feet in diameter ! The top was rotted and gone, but it could not have been less than three hundred and twenty-five or three hundred and fifty feet high. And yet this tree was only eighteen feet in diameter where the Big Tree was twenty-five. That a man can ride through one of these fallen trunks on horseback really signifies nothing, when if the Big Tree were hollowed as it might be, one might drive the largest load of hay through it without even a brush of contact.

And yet two things conspire to let down a little our sense of sublimity of these vegetable wonders. Many of the trees and all the largest of them that remain are greatly injured by fire. Their time is therefore shortened, and a long time will be required to bring the smaller ones up to their maximum of growth. This being true, that a man, supposed to have a soul, instigated by the infernal love of money, should have cut down the biggest of them, and skinned the next, one hundred and

twenty feet upward from the ground (viz., the Mother,) that he might show or sell the bark of her body, both sound as a rock at the heart, and good for a thousand years to come-O it surpasses all contempt! The wretch would have skinned his own mother, doubtless, for the same reason. Such a fact leaves one beyond utterance, and vexation does not suit well with the nobler sense of sublimity. And yet to see this Giant Mother still growing up as before, bearing her fresh foliage, ripening her seeds, and refusing to die; hiding still her juices and working her pumps in the deep masses of her barkless body, which the sun of two whole years has not been able to season through, dead as it is and weather-cracked without-it is a sight so grand as almost to compensate for the loss we suffer by the baseness of the human scamp who has moved our contempt so inopportunely.

The other subtraction referred to is the loss of poetry occasioned by a discovery of the certain extravagance of the calculations that are current respecting the age of the trees. The Big Tree, we are told, was growing when Athens left the quarry, in the days of the Pharaohs, in the days of Abraham, and I know not but that some have said, in the days of the old Red Sandstone. The result is made out by taking some inches of the wood from the higher parts of the tree where the grain is fine, counting the grains, and then multiplying by half the largest diameter at the ground, viz., fifteen and a half feet. In just this way, we ourselves made out a proof that this tree was 4,007 years old. But why resort to this artificial method, when a better and absolutely certain method is in our power? The grains of the stump can be actually counted; for they are about as distinct as the teeth of a saw, except that, for two or three inches in two places, where the growth was slow, they are a little huddled, and cannot be made out very distinctly. That we might have a test, I and my friend made separate counts. According to his, the tree was 1,252 years old; according to mine, 1,272. It cannot have been older from the seed than 1,280 or 1,300 years. And this should be antiquity enough. What a conception of vegetable life, that when Gregory was consolidating the papal supremacy, when Mahomet was nursing at his mother's breast, when old Belisarius was knocking right and left among his enemies, this tree was sprouting into the small immortality of 1,300 years, then to die only by violence! Thus much, in my silent chamber, about trees.

THE FROG AND THE EEL.

ONCE upon a summer evening the frogs croaked lustily in the marsh. An eel crept quietly past them. "Ho, neighbor," cried one of the frogs, "will you not join in and help us to sing ?"

The eel excused itself, saying: "I have not been favored with a voice." "No voice!" exclaimed the astonished frog. "Alas, for you, poor pitiful creature. I am sorry for you—you are to be pitied !"

"You may be right," answered the eel; "yet it is only necessary to hear you and your like, to convince any one that a modest silence is better than an everlasting loud and empty babbling."

EVENING.

FROM THE GERMAN, BY THE EDITOR.

GLORIOUSLY as he rose so she sets, the brilliant king of day. He casts a softened purple light into the regions of earth which, in his daily course, he illuminated and blest. He spreads a mild red veil over the distant heavens. O what a goodly sight! Yonder all glows as in firehere all lies in serene and rosy light-and there all seems purest gold! How it streams across the waters-how it glistens in the windows.

What a lovely departure! That which so sets must rise again. No! this is no departure-it is a greeting with promise to meet again -so full of glorious earnest. This look upon the world is a look of promise-a great look of joy upon work completed-a smiling look of triumph and victory into the coming night. That which we see as the red of evening, is but the other half of what others see as the dawn of morning. Night sets in darkly, to cover, and cool, and bring to rest, what the day has made hot, and weak and weary. Slumber, soft refreshing slumber will soon sink upon all life and embrace it mildly, rocking it into golden dreams. The quiet evening precedes the night-and yet once more does the highest glory of day break in upon the evening-and when the night is past the brilliant day will again usher in its high triumph.

Balmy sleep, how dost thou refresh all weary natures; thou art a priceless gift of kind heaven. How benevolently dost thou bury man's pains and cares, roll from his heart the burdens of sorrow, and cause him to forget the tribulations of life.

Quiet evening-how does thy cool air and gentle dew quicken what the hot sun has made languid. Thou dost invite man into thy fragrant bowers, dost fill his heart with feelings of peace, dost make tender and peaceful, and dost call forth from his eyes sweet tears of gratitude and love.

How is my heart glad in the light-more beautiful as it sets-which proclaims that it will return on another day. Yes, he will come forth again in majesty, the bright sun, when the slumbers of the night have refreshed me. He will come again, the symbol of God's blessedness, and all life will awake and rejoice. I cease not to praise God that my eyes can see, and my heart feel, all this glorious vision.

In

As the sun sets, so dies a great and good man. Yet greater and better is he in dying than in living. Then the new life rises mightily in his bosom, and sheds the beams of a great hope over his countenance. the consciousness of immortality he looks with triumph into the face of death. His last look is a look of blessing toward the world, a look of joy upon his finished work, a look of victory upon the dawning day of his new being. Not only the great and good, but also those who have moved in an humble sphere, and blessed the world in a narrower circle, die as the sun sets, in grateful remembrance of the mercies of God which cheered and strengthened them on earth, in a sense of heavenly love by which all their days have been warmed and illuminated, in the consciousness of the good which they have accomplished, and in the blessed hope of the better life toward which they hasten.

NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ULRIC ZWINGLI. Translated from the German of J. J. Hottinger, by the Rev. Prof. T. C. Porter, of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa. Harrisburg: Published by Theo. F. Scheffer, 1856.

In the present number of The Guardian will be found a full review of this work furnished by another hand. Hence we shall not speak of the merits of the book itself. The translation is free and fluent. We have in former numbers favorably noticed several works translated by the same hand. We regard Prof. Porter as one of the very best translators of the German into English. To a full knowledge of German in letter and spirit he adds a charming and graceful English style. What a pity, so one feels after reading "Augustine," "Herman and Dorothea," and "Zwingli," that such works as Olshausen's Commentary, so badly done, did not fall into the hands of Prof. Porter. We hope "Zwingli" is not the last work that he will OVERSET-as a certain one of a different class of translators ridiculously rendered the word UEBERSETZEN-for our pleasure and profit. The publishers have done their work well, and have demonstrated that neat, tasty books can be made in the interior as well as on the sea-shore. Zwingli will have a large sale. Every young man should read it.

"THE KEYSTONE Collection of CHURCH MUSIC" is the name of a new book just issued by the enterprising firm of Murray, Young & Co. of this city, and who can justly claim the honor of having published the first work on this subject in this city. The work deserves the serious consideration of every one who desires music to assume the high position which it ought to occupy, whether in the church, the musical association, the singing-school, or wherever it may or ought to be introduced. If it be desirable to sing why may it not be done properly as well as improperly; and if we can possess a work whose elementary principles embrace everything which is requisite to a proper elementary knowledge of music, and are so clear and concise that we at once unconsciously assent to every word and to every direction expressed, we think that is the work which is calculated to afford the best facilities for imparting the necessary instruction.

Our friend Mr. G. E. W. Sharritts, who is favorably known in our community as a choir leader, and who is at present leading the choir of St. John's Lutheran Church of this city, endorses the work fully, as far as he has had opportunity to examine it, and says that the course of instruction meets entirely with views which he has always held, but has not been able himself nor has he ever seen them so judiciously arranged or so clearly expressed as in the present able work. The authors, A. N. Johnson and E. H. Frost, are extensively known for their high musical attainments, and are held in much estimation here on account of the impetus which they gave to vocal music in our midst. They established the first musical convention ever assembled here, and the plan adopted at the convention, and which proved so successful, they do not feel justified in selfishly retaining for their own private benefit, but like true scientific philanthropists, they sow broadcast over our happy and music loving country ideas and sentiments which, if properly cultivated and matured, will make us a nation of the most perfect singers upon which the sun ever shone.

RUPP'S THIRTY THOUSAND NAMES OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF PENNSYLNANIA.— The fourth and fifth numbers of this curious and valuable publication is received. We understand it is well encouraged, as it richly deserves to be. How often do we hear Pennsylvanians speak of their ancestors as having come from Europe, yet they almost invariably add: "But we do not know when they came in." Our advice is to procure this work for the trifling sum of one dollar and you will soon see and know.

..........A Milan newspaper announces that the Rev. Father Secchi, Director of the Observatory at Rome, has succeeded in taking photographs of the moon, and amongst them one in which the mouth of the volcano Copernicus is distinctly represented.