THE SOUL OF A TREE 13 



never understood how possible, how common, 

 they must have been in mediaeval Europe, till 

 I saw in the forest of Fontainebleau a few oaks 

 like the oak of Charlemagne, and the Bouquet 

 du Roi, at whose age I dare not guess, but 

 whose size and shape showed them to have 

 once formed part of a continuous wood, the 

 like whereof remains not in these isles, perhaps 

 not east of the Carpathian Mountains. In 

 them a clear shaft of at least sixty, it may be 

 eighty feet, carries a flat head of boughs, each in 

 itself a tree. In such a grove, I thought the 

 heathen Gaul, even the heathen Frank, wor- 

 shipped beneath * trees of God '. Such trees, 

 I thought, centuries after, inspired the genius 

 of every builder of Gothic aisles and roofs." 

 From this passage we take just now only the 

 one suggestion that a sense of fellowship with 

 the trees may be deep in our nature ; dormant 

 only, it is but too likely, in those who are 

 closely confined in our overgrown towns and 

 cities ; ready to awake again if the companion- 

 ship of trees should happily be granted them 

 again. 



Is the reader one of those for whom the 

 companionship of trees is almost an impossi- 



