44 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



where there are more trees than buildings. 

 Nature, though partly subdued to man's use, 

 is still around us. Daily we are faced by 

 whole kingdoms of life that are a mystery to 

 us. When we step out into the road at night 

 it is not to see lamps, but the stars ; and they 

 are not less wonderful to us because we know 

 them to be not fixed in a solid vault held up 

 above the earth by a huge tree, but great suns 

 millions of miles away in the depths of space. 

 The fields and the woodlands are not less 

 romantic to us than they were to the people 

 of earlier days, because we cannot, as they did, 

 people them with kindred spirits. What 

 seems strange to us was commonplace to 

 them. But we are dull if the constant miracle 

 of myriad life, of living things bearing, each 

 after its kind, do not often bring to us thoughts 

 too deep for tears. When we go out to cut 

 the holly and the mistletoe at Christmas-time, 

 and when, after the sweet showers of April 

 have brought the flowers of May, we again 

 observe old customs, it is with more, surely, 

 rather than less of the old delight and wonder ; 

 for our conception of the spirit-world that 

 moves the stars in heaven, and brings life 



