Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/88

The priests of the Germans and Britons were Druids. They had their sacred oaken groves. Such were their steeple-houses. Nature was to some extent a fane to them. There was fine religion in that form of worship, and Stonehenge remains are evidence of some vigor in the worshipers, as the pyramids perchance of the vigor of the Egyptians, derived from the slime of the Nile. Evelyn says of the oaks, which he calls "these robust sons of the earth," "'T is reported that the very shade of this tree is so wholesome that the sleeping or lying under it becomes a present remedy to paralytics, and recovers those whom the mistaken malign influence of the walnut-tree has smitten." Which we may take for a metaphorical expression of the invigorating influence of rude, wild, robust nature compared with the effeminating luxury of civilized life. Evelyn has collected the fine exaggerations of antiquity respecting the virtues and habits of trees, and added some himself. He says, "I am told that those small young acorns which we find in the stock-doves craws are a delicious fare, as well as those incomparable salads of young herbs taken out of the maws of partridges at a certain season of the year, which gives them a preparation far exceeding all the art of cookery." His oft-repeated glorification of the forest from age to age smacks