Does not our forest deserve the name of the Shakespearian comedy, "As You Like It"?
No; to deal justly with it, we must own that its entertaining metamorphosis, and all its changes to the eye, are absolutely external. Movable in its leaves and mists, fugitive in its shifting sands, it has a firmer foundation than perhaps any other forest, and a power of fixity which communicates itself to the soul, and invites it to grow strong; to search out and seek within its own nature whatever it possesses of the inscrutable. Do not linger too long over its fantastic accidents. Without it says, "As You Like It;" within, "Ever and for ever."
Its beauty is that of the profound, faithful, and tender heart, which does not the less vary its exquisite grace, though it may daily repeat the words of Charles d'Orléans:
"Who can ever weary of her?
Still her beauty she renews."
These ideas occurred to me one day as, seated upon Mont Ussy, I looked across Fontainebleau. I comprehended how, in this confined and ordinary region—in this apparent chaos of rocks, and trees, and sandstone—prevailed a tolerable degree of order, which necessarily concealed within it a mystery not obvious at the first glance.
As a whole, it is almost a circle of hills and forests, all dry on the surface; but the sandstone is very pervious, and the sand filtrates with great facility. And the unseen waters, descend in all directions to a great reservoir which occupies the depths.
Storms are frequent here, but do not spread very far. We may nearly always expect them, for the forest detains and arrests them, preserves for itself the wealth of suspended waters, transmitting them to the lower grounds after they have been sifted through the leaves, the woods, and the sands. All this occurs below, without the process ever becoming visible.
Dig, and you shall find.