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Crystallization is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter; yet the simplest rustic observer is struck by the resemblance which the examples of it left upon a window by frost bear to vegetable forms. In some crystallizations the mimicry is beautiful and complete; for example, in the well-known one called the Arbor Dianae.
If you put mercury into a solution of nitrate of silver, and leave them for a few days to combine, the result will be a precipitation of silver in a lovely arborescent form, the arbor Dianae, beautiful beyond description. Such are my favourite ash trees when the summer sunshine sparkles on them. It is their bare, silvered trunks that give the special charm to these hanging woods.
Some observations which I imparted to him on that subject have been published, with his reply, in the Literary News of the Baltic Sea. He interprets this passage from Lucan somewhat otherwise than I do: Teutates, pollensque feris altaribus Hesus, Et Tamaris Scythicae non mitior ara Dianae.
And the passage from Lucan means that the altar of Taran, God of the Celts, was not less cruel than that of Diana in Tauris: Taranis aram non mitiorem ara Dianae Scythicae fuisse. It is also not impossible that there was a time when the western or Celtic princes made themselves masters of Greece, of Egypt and a good part of Asia, and that their cult remained in those countries.
Varus, Pollio, and Varius were old enough to know Catullus and Calvus personally, to remember the days when poems like Dianae sumus in fide were just issued, and they were poets who could value the perfect art of such work even after the authors of them had been enticed by ambition into dangerous by-paths.
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