i86 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



tended to imitate a leaf, but to be invested with 

 the same characters of beauty which the de- 

 signer had discovered in the leaf". Kingsley 

 maintained that ''more and more boldly, the 

 mediaeval architect learnt to copy boughs, stems, 

 and at last, the whole effect, as far always as 

 stone would allow, of a combination of rock 

 and tree, of grot and grove ". One has to say 

 that, unless one's eyes have deceived one in 

 Gothic buildings well-nigh innumerable, their 

 builders did not seek to do what Kingsley says 

 they did. Or, if they were tending that way, 

 it was well that the movement was arrested ; 

 for to have gone much further than they did 

 would have been to lose design in imitation, 

 to confuse art with nature. The green -painted 

 hawthorn of Bourges is not a solitary example 

 of naturalism in excess. 



If we must think that Ruskin was exaggerat- 

 ing when he said that stony pillar and vaulted 

 roof "wreathed themselves into the semblance 

 of the summer woods at their fairest," we have 

 no quarrel with him when he says that ''of the 

 dead field-flowers, long trodden down in blood, 

 sweet monumental statues were set to bloom 

 for ever, beneath the porch of the temple, or 



