“Are the trees just in one particular place, then?” asked Malcolm.  “I thought they grew all over that country?”

“The principal and best-known grove of very large and ancient cedars of Lebanon is found in one place,” replied his governess, “but there are other groves now known to exist.  The famous grove was fast disappearing, until there were but few of them left.  The pilgrims who went to visit them in such numbers in olden times were accompanied by monks from a monastery about four miles below, who would beseech them not to injure a single leaf.  But the greatest care could not preserve the trees.  Some of them have been struck down by lightning, some broken by enormous loads of snow, and others torn to fragments by tempests.  Some have even been cut down with axes like any common tree.  But better care is now taken of them; so that we may hope that the grove will live and increase.”

“But why weren’t they saved,” asked Clara, “when people thought so much of them?”

“It seems to be a part of the general desolation of the land of God’s chosen but rebellious people.  In the third chapter of the prophet Isaiah, verses eleven and twelve, it is said, ’For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low; and upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan.’  The same prophet says, in the tenth chapter and nineteenth verse, ’And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them.’  These words have been particularly applied to the stately cedars of Lebanon, for ’the once magnificent grove is but a speck on the mountain-side.  Many persons have taken it in the distance for a wood of fir trees, but on approaching nearer and taking a closer view the cedars resume somewhat of their ancient majesty.  The space they cover is not more than half a mile, but, once amidst them, the beautiful fan-like branches overhead, the exquisite green of the younger trees and the colossal size of the older ones fill the mind with interest and admiration.  Within the grove all is hushed as in a land of the past.  Where once the Tyrian workman plied his axe and the sound of many voices came upon the ear, there are now the silence and solitude of desertion and decay.’—­Malcolm,” added his governess, “you may read us what is written in the sixth verse of the fourteenth chapter of Hosea.”

“‘His branches,’” read Malcolm, “’shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.’  What does that mean, Miss Harson?”