64 UNDER THE TREES. 



again into a current inaudible and invisible. The 

 intellectual life that is all expressed, that is all con 

 scious and self-directed, is but a shallow life at 

 best ; he only lives deeply in the intellect whose 

 thought begins in instinct, rises slowly through ex 

 perience, carrying with it into consciousness the 

 noblest, truest one has felt and been, and finds 

 speech at last by impulse and direction of the same 

 law which summons the seed from the soil and lifts 

 it, growth by growth, to the beauty and the sweet 

 ness of the flower. Under the same law of uncon 

 scious growth every true poem, every great work 

 of art, and every genuine noble character, has fash 

 ioned itself and come at last to conscious perfect- 

 ness and recognition. Genius is nearer Nature 

 than talent ; it is only when it strays away from 

 Nature, and loses itself in mere dexterities, that it 

 degenerates into skill and becomes a tool with 

 which to work, and not a gift from heaven. The 

 silence of the deep woods is pregnant with mighty 

 growths. Says Maurice de Guerin, true poet and 

 lover of Nature : &quot; An innumerable generation 

 actually hangs on the branches of all the trees, on 

 the fibers of the most insignificant grasses, like 

 babes on the mother s breast. All these germs, in 

 calculable in their number and variety, are there 

 suspended in their cradle between heaven and 

 earth, and given over to the winds, whose 

 charge it is to rock these beings. Unseen amid 

 the living forests swing the forests of the future. 



