132 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



are glad that it is not always with us, lest its 

 loveliness should grow stale and cease to 

 charm. 



Here I may interpolate the remark that a 

 living landscape painter, Mr. George Clausen, 

 has often rendered this effect with rare subtlety. 

 For one picture of his, representing men work- 

 ing in a kitchen-garden, or allotment patches, 

 on a frosty morning — the ground just turned 

 over by the spade being rich brown, and the 

 rest greyed by the frost, which also shines on 

 tree and haystack — ^I have a particular affec- 

 tion, because one of my greatest pleasures, not 

 often enough enjoyed to lose its freshness, is 

 to see a similar effect in a nursery-garden 

 immediately behind my house. And how 

 finely two Scots pines in the distance take 

 their place in such a scene! With such 

 in frequency does the hoar-frost come ; so 

 speedily does it disappear ; that, as he has 

 told me, and as I have seen, Mr. Clausen 

 has had to lay aside unfinished canvases for 

 a whole year, until a return of the transient 

 effect has enabled him to complete them. 



Winter, then, is no time of discontent to the 

 observant lover of beauty. He has not ceased 



