BEECH. 207 



cordant, are often harmonized by the intervening 

 trees in the foreground. We can bear the glow of 

 the distant Beech wood, when it is contrasted, at 

 hand, by a spreading Oak, whose foliage has yet 

 scarce lost its summer tint or by an Elm or an 

 Ash, whose fading leaves have assumed a yellowish 

 hue.' 



The especial admiration of Gilpin for the Oak 

 and his strange prejudice against the Beech must 

 have greatly tinged his estimation of the Beech 

 foliage in Autumn for though, like all foliage 

 which has reached the final state of its autumn 

 hue, there is a degree of monotony in the per- 

 vading uniformity of one colour, it has much more 

 than Gilpin appeared to think the charm of 

 variety. His prejudice probably prevented him 

 from carefully studying the Beech in early 

 Autumn ; for the variety of its shades of colour, 

 at that season, is almost endless. Sometimes, as 

 with the foliage of the Oak and Elm, a flush of 

 golden colour appears to suffuse, as it were, the 

 green surface of the leaf. At other times the tints 

 are so graduated that green lines or bands appear 

 to lie together in parallel and alternate order the 



N 2 



