THE SOUL OF A TREE 3 



through being tougher than what was around 

 them, have for longer time resisted the destruc- 

 tive forces of frost and rain. Their structure is 

 not organic, only mechanical. They have not 

 raised themselves by some inward life. Still 

 we love them ; and we are hurt if we are too 

 insistently asked to think of them as what, in 

 mere fact, they are, only little more than 

 chance excrescences which would not roughen 

 the surface of the globe to the feeling of one 

 who could hold it in his hand. We are per- 

 haps ready to speak even of the soul of the 

 mountains, and almost to regret that not they, 

 but only the trees they bear so lightly on their 

 flanks, are our immediate subject. 



Let us take one more illustration, this time 

 from the work of man. The towers and spires 

 of our cathedrals, abbeys and churches are 

 hardly less dear to us than our hills. Kent 

 will seek as carefully to make good the Bell 

 Harry tower at Canterbury against wind and 

 rain, as Shakespeare's Cliff at Dover against 

 the inroads of the sea. Lincolnshire has no 

 mountains ; but it has the three towers on the 

 edge of the wold, and Boston Stump, and many 

 another landmark. Wiltshire has joy and pride 



