Outside London 



Every one must have noticed their joyousness in 

 spring; they are quiet, but so very, very busy in the 

 height of summer; as autumn comes on they ob- 

 viously delight in the occasional hours of warmth. 

 The marks of their little feet are almost sacred 

 a joyous life has been there do not obliterate 

 it. It is so delightful to know that something is 

 happy. 



The hawthorn hedge that goes down the slope is 

 more coloured than the hedges in the sheltered plain. 

 Yonder, a low bush on the brow is a deep crimson; 

 the hedge as it descends varies from brown to yellow, 

 dotted with red haws, and by the gateway has another 

 spot of crimson. The lime trees turn yellow from top 

 to bottom, all the leaves together; the elms by one or 

 two branches at a time. A lime tree thus entirely 

 coloured stands side by side with an elm, their boughs 

 intermingling; the elm is green except a line at the 

 outer extremity of its branches. A red light as of 

 fire plays in the beeches, so deep is their orange tint 

 in which the sunlight is caught. An oak is dotted 

 with buff, while yet the main body of the foliage is 

 untouched. With these tints and sunlight, nature 

 gives us so much more than the tree gives. A tree is 

 nothing but a tree in itself: but with light and 

 shadow, green leaves moving, a bird singing, another 

 moving to and fro in autumn with colour the 

 boughs are filled with imagination. There then 

 seems so much more than the mere tree; the timber 

 of the trunk, the mere sticks of the branches, the 

 wooden framework is animated with a life. High 

 above, a lark sings, not for so long as in spring the 

 October song is shorter but still he sings. If you 

 love colour, plant maple; maple bushes colour a 

 whole hedge. Upon the bank of a pond, the brown 

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