June A Pine-wood. 171 



shall not say what I thought of, for it is not good always to be 

 communicative ; but altogether that hour in the pine-wood was 

 the happiest hour of the whole journey, though I saw many 

 grand pictures and noble statues, a mighty river, and buildings 

 which were built when people had their own clear thoughts 

 of what they meant to do and how they would do it.' * 



This is as different as possible from Dante's feeling 

 about woods, but then the English writer knew that he 

 could easily get out of his pine-wood to catch the 

 vetturino again ; and in England, where he had learned 

 to love woods as places to meditate in, they are never 

 large enough to inspire the forest-fear of which I have 

 spoken elsewhere. And yet the pine is not in the 

 spring-time the most cheerful-looking of forest-trees, 

 though it has a wholesome influence on the mind, and 

 fills the air with a healthy and stimulating odor. The 

 sycamore-maple is far more gay, with its long pendent 

 racemes of greenish-yellow flowers. The botanists call 

 this family the Aceracecs, because the wood is sturdy ; 

 and the reader may remember how in that magnificent 

 rustic song ' Les Bceufs,' by Pierre Dupont, the poet 

 begins by particularizing the woods from which the 

 plough and the goad are made, and the wood used 

 in the plough is sycamore : 



' J'ai deux grands boeufs dans mon Stable, 



Deux grands boeufs blancs marque's de roux ; 

 La charrue est en bois d'erable 

 L'aiguillon en branche de houx.' 



* ' Companions of my Solitude.' By Sir ARTHUR HELPS. Roberts 

 Brothers' Ed. p. 77. 



