2o8 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



mean that he did not include many of them in 

 one pictured scene. But he did not picture 

 them in their true relations of colour and tone, 

 and even size. The difference in tone between 

 a tree a hundred yards away, and another tree 

 of the same kind half a mile away, did not 

 interest him as an artist, any more than such 

 a problem, and similar ones, interest children 

 drawing in the nursery. 



The art of the early Middle Ages showed 

 less interest in nature even than that of the 

 Catacombs. Christianity lost its early joyous- 

 ness. The great problem as stated by the 

 Church, was not so much to live rightly in this 

 world, as to believe rightly, so that happiness 

 might be secured in the world to come. Re- 

 ligion, of course, included more than this. But 

 this aspect of it received great emphasis ; and 

 was the one almost exclusively dealt with by 

 art; and art, controlled by the Church, dealt 

 with little but religion. The world was a sinful 

 and lost world ; its doom might come upon it 

 at any time. To have the thoughts turned to 

 the world behind this world, and to the beings 

 there, Divine and between the Divine and the 

 human, was the prime necessity. Hence art 



