BENEDICITE 169 



shaft strikes straight through a gap in the green, to 

 become the causeway of congregated insects. 

 Sound, too, is there, but of a sort that enhances 

 stillness the low general hum of insects ; the sudden 

 rustle of dry leaves where some startled creature 

 hies away to cover ; bird-songs that float up and are 

 lost in the unreverberant canopy of leaves ; the 

 passage of the wind a spirit, rather, formless, 

 unsubstantial, that moves athwart material things, 

 and is gone by a way unseen. 



As I perambulate a wood, I go on tip-toe. A 

 cathedral is a glorified dwelling-house ; the dwelling- 

 house, a developed hut a woodman's hut with its 

 uprights, cross-beams and natural thatch ; the wood- 

 man's hut, a reduced wood, four-square, wattled in to 

 temper wind and rain. The wood is the archetype, 

 of all ; the cathedral its last expression in art. So 

 it comes that in both one goes quietly, and with 

 reverence, feeling in one the mystery of Nature, in 

 the other the mystery of Human Nature. Yet, 

 rightly considered, there is no such fundamental 

 distinction, much less antagonism ; for both are 

 expressions of that which, including each, is greater 

 than either the mystery of Life. By multi- 

 plication of column and arch, by suggested height 

 and distance, by infinite elaboration of detail, there is 

 conveyed in the one a sense of struggle for that which 

 is higher, afar off, hard of attainment. And, in spite 

 of the graces of colour and uplifting sounds, there 

 remains to the beholder in the end a dominant 

 sense of strife, the long upward fight through the 

 ages as symbolised by this agony in stone. The 

 struggle is present, the sense of strife predominant, 



