But this has led me astray, and I must return to Xerxes the Great King. The predilection or passion which he discovered for the plane, the sage of Doncaster explained by deriving it from a dim reminiscence of his former existence in a tree of the same kind; or which was not less likely in the wanton ivy which had clasped one, or in the wild vine which had festooned its branches with greener leaves, or even in the agaric which had grown out of its decaying substance. And he would have quoted Wordsworth if the Sage of Rydal had not been of a later generation: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar. Other examples of men who have doated upon particular trees he accounted for by the same philosophy. But in the case of the Consul Crispus he was more inclined to hold the first supposition,—to wit, that he had been a beech himself, and that the tree which he loved so dearly had sprung from his own mast, so that the feeling with which he regarded it was a parental one. For that man should thus unconsciously afford proof of his relationship to tree, was rendered more probable by a singular, though peradventure single fact in which a tree so entirely recognized its affinity with man, that a slip accidentally grafted on the human subject, took root in the body, grew there, flourished, blossomed and produced fruit after its kind. “A shepherd of Tarragon had fallen into a sloe tree, and a sharp point thereof having run into his breast, in two years time it took such root, that, after many branches had been cut off, there sprang up some at last which bare both flowers and fruit.” “Peiresc,” as Gassendi the writer of his life assures us, “would never be quiet till Cardinal Barberino procured the Archbishop of that place to testify the truth of the story; and Putean the knight received not only letters testifying the same, but also certain branches thereof, which he sent unto him.” CHAPTER CCXVI. A SPANISH AUTHORESS.—HOW THE DOCTOR OBTAINED HER WORKS FROM MADRID.—THE PLEASURE AND ADVANTAGES WHICH THE AUTHOR DERIVES FROM HIS LANDMARKS IN THE BOOKS WHICH HE HAD PERUSED. ALEX. _Quel es D. Diego aquel Arbol, que tiene la copa en tierra y las raizes arriba?_ DIEG. _El hombre._ EL LETRADO DEL CIELO. Man is a Tree that hath no top in cares, No root in comforts.[1] This is one of the many poetical passages in which the sound is better than the sense;—yet it is not without its beauty. The same similitude has been presented by Henry More in lines which please the ear less, but satisfy the understanding. The lower man is nought but a fair plant Whose grosser matter is from the base ground.