Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:- L E T T E R V. A FOREST FUNERAL. New York, March, 1847. I Have been several times on the point of writing you about Sunday in the forest, but have each 'time forgotten my intention, or had something else to say. There have been many scenes of worship in which I have taken part, or which I have witnessed. I have seen the ignorant worshipper of senseless images, and the formal worshippers of the pretended real body of The Crucified, present in the bread of the Host. I have heard the solemn cathedral chant when thousands knelt and prayed, and I have heard the miserere in the solemn Passion night thrill through the soul of countless waiting worshippers. But I never felt so near to God and so near to Heaven ason the bank of the river on a calm Sunday morning, when the thousand voices of the forest were united in a hymn of joy. There is a melody in running water that is never imitated or equalled by any art; and there , is a strange harmony between the sounds of running water and rushing wind and singing birds and the voices of the various wood animals, that altogether make up the morning song of the forest when it wakes to praise the Infinite. How slowly and silently the dead leaves drop one by one into the water from the listless branches. The branches themselves bend and sway up and down and back and forth as if with life; for it does not seem that any wind is blowing, but the trees lean over as if to see their own shades a thousand times repeated in the rippling river, and reach their armsdown toward the glittering surface, as if longing to lie in the cool clear bed. Some of them have fallen. Yonder is one that has lain for four, yes, six years, to my knowledge in that same position—and every year, at the same time, I come and sit here and watch that long b...