Chapter III

"Love, despair, ambition, and peace, spring up like trees from the soil of our natures."--_E. Irving_.

This idea, by a "singular coincidence," has been carried out in the Chinese novel, 'Yu-Kiao-Li, or the Adventures of Red Jasper and Dream of a Peartree,'--_traduit par M. Abel Remusat_. I translate from the French translation.

"In a fresh soil under a pleasant sky--clouded, but spanned by a rainbow--grew a green tree. Its branches were beautifully fashioned, and wore leaves which seemed to be chiselled from emerald. The moonlight fell upon the tree, and so intense was the reflection that every portion of the surrounding scenery took upon itself a gaudy and happy coloring. This tree was _Love_--it grew from the soil of a young nature. Alas! its life cannot be the life of the amaranth.

"The second tree was in a soil torn up and bruised--the plants of which were freezing under a cold wind. Its branches were matted and black. No light penetrated them. The sky above was of ebony. The rainbow was not there. This tree was _Despair_. Alas! for the beauty of Love! Is it not pushed from its stool by Despair?

"The third tree was in a soil firm to the eye, but undermined by the molewarp. Its scathed branches were entombed in the sky. Its peak, jealous of the eagle, out-towered him. About its stem, and through its haughty boughs a strange light played. It was neither the light of the sun nor yet the light of the moon. It was a false glare--a glare greatest about the region of decay. This tree was _Ambition_. Alas! for the pride and the haughty yearning of mortal men!

"In the healthy soil of a valley, on which the eye of a bright day seemed ever open, grew the fourth tree. Its branches neither towered haughtily nor stooped slavishly. Health was in every bough; and lo! the rainbow which had fallen from the sky of Despair had surely been imprisoned among its leaves. The wind fanned these leaves healthily and their transparent cups teinted by the sunlight--as red wines teint the fine vases of porcelain--were beautiful to behold. This tree was _Peace_. The moonlight of Love may grow dim; the sky of Despair is of ebony; the light of Ambition dies in the ashes of its fuel; but the sunlight of Peace is the light of an eye ever open. The head may be white and bowed down, but the threads of the angel-woven rainbow are wrapped about the heart of peaceful and holy Eld."