Middletown Transcript

THE CEDARS OF LEBANON.

Felled with an unsparing hand, neglected by a desolate and oppressed people, these famous cedar groves had shrunk gradually away, leaving a naked and melancholy waste, where once was unfading coolness, and the gloom at noonday, so welcome to the weary. The inhabitant, who once "made his nest beneath the pleasant branches," was now compelled to lay his head on the rock; one group was still left, on which the tempest and the lightning had spent their fury for ages; but the trunks were unscathed, the foliage unwithered.

Thousands of years ago the kings of the earth built their palaces and temples from these noble trees, and thought that their glory and beauty were to be forever; but time had smote them like the thistle on the hill. The people looked on the trees with reverence, and every one cut pieces from the branches, to be treasured as relics, and borne to their various homes; they were about twenty in number, of immense size, being about thirty or forty feet in circumference, with divers rows of branches, stretching straight out, as though they were kept by art: some young cedar trees had been planted around by the hands of others, but it was only to grow up and die.

The part of the mountain where they stood was a small plain, around which rose the high and snow covered peaks, whose white mantle no summer took away; it looked like a solitary world; the only thing that triumphed over the wide decay that had come down on city, temple and forest, was this single and eternal group of cedars; each year saw them put forth their rich and proud foliage, and the same shadows that had sheltered the princes of Tyre and Judea now waved over the lonely group of Christians.

One tree alone of the group had fallen, long since, it was said by some; according to others, but a few years ago; but whether blown down by the storms, or leveled at last by age, it was not easy to decide. Slowly the hand of decay came over it; for while some of the branches were withering and put forth no leaves, the rest were yet green and feebly flourishing; for the struggle for life was still strong in the noble tree.