Near them stood a young spruce fir, not more than five feet high. It had thrown up a straight and tapering spire, scaled with tender green. Below were tassels, tufts, and pointlets, all in triple order, pluming over one another in a pile of beauty. The tips of all were touched with softer and more glaucous tone. But all this gentle tint and form was only as a framework now, a loom to bear the web of heaven. For there had been a white mist that morning—autumnʼs breath made visible; and the tree with its net of spiderʼs webs had caught the lucid moisture. Now, as the early sunlight opened through the layered vapours, that little spruce came boldly forth a dark bay of the forest, and met all the spears of the orient. Looped and traced with threads of gauze, the lacework of a fairyʼs thought, scarcely daring to breathe upon its veil of tremulous chastity, it kept the wings of light on the hover, afraid to weigh down the whiteness. A maiden with the love–dream nestling under the bridal faldetta, a child of genius breathing softly at his own fair visions, even an infantʼs angel whispering to the weeping mother—what image of humanity can be so bright and exquisite as a common treeʼs apparel? “Father, can you make that”? Mr. Garnet checked his rapid stride; and for once he admired a tree. “No, my son; only God can do such glorious work as that”. “But it donʼt take God to undo it. Smash”! Bob dashed his fists through the whole of it, and all the draped embroidery, all the pearly filigree, all the festoons of silver, were but as a dream when a yawning man stretches his scraggy arms forth. The little tree looked wobegone, stale, and draggled with drunken tears. “Why, Bob, I am ashamed of you”. “And so am I of you, father”. Before the bold speech was well out of his mouth, Bob took heartily to his heels; and, for once in his life, Mr. Garnet could not make up his mind what to do. After all, he was not so very angry, for he thought that his son had been rather clever in his mode of enforcing the moral; and a man who loves ability, and loves his boy still more, regards with a liberal shrewdness the proof of the one in the other. Alas, it is hard to put Mr. Garnet in a clear, bold stereoscope, without breach of the third commandment. Somehow or other, as fashion goes—and happily it is on the go always—a man, and threefold thrice a woman, may, at this especial period, in the persons of his or her characters, break the sixth commandment lightly, and the seventh with great applause. Indeed, no tale is much approved without lèse–majesté of them both. Then for what subterranean reason, or by what diabolical instrumentality (that language is strictly parliamentary, because it is words and water), is a writer now debarred from reporting what his people said, unless they all talked tracts and milk, or rubrics and pommel–saddles? In a word—for sometimes any fellow must come to the point—Why do our judicious and highly–respected Sosii score out all our d—ns?