82 IValks in New England 



prolonged, its ideal loveliness preserved, through 

 weeks of unsurpassable beauty, as if to intensify all 

 our love for the &quot; soote season &quot; that Surrey wrote 

 of, and that is so often brief as &quot; the posy of a 

 ring.&quot; 



What these weeks of pause produce we may see 

 now all around us in the woods and fields ; while 

 yet on the higher hills summer is much farther off, 

 and bloom and leafage not yet in large evidence. 

 It is owing largely to the maples that the colours 

 of the spring remain so charmingly fine. Without 

 the maples our woodland and our meadows and 

 pastures, not to speak of our roadsides, would lose 

 much in both spring and fall. The maple is 

 claimed by the Canadas, but New England surely 

 shares their claim of this tree s noble and continu 

 ous beauty. Matthew Arnold, when he visited 

 this country, was more impressed with the great 

 sugar maples before old places in the Berkshire 

 towns than with the elms which are so commonly 

 regarded as special New England glories. To his 

 eye, the English elm was not the inferior of our 

 white elm, but the English maple, he allowed, bore 

 no comparison with these superb trees. He un 

 fortunately never traveled among our hills with 

 that freedom which alone can show truly the 

 characteristics of country, or he would have found 

 the red and white maples also important and ex- 



