290 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



vast and strange they look on the darkest, 

 cloudy nights ! We can hardly trace their 

 boundaries. It is under the moonlight that 

 their night-effect is most beautiful. We see 

 the light through the nearer trees, and they 

 are darkly silhouetted against it. On the more 

 distant ones the light falls as a silver sheen ; if 

 the moonlight be broken by passing clouds, 

 the light seems to shower upon the trees. The 

 clear nights have their own beauty, so have 

 the misty ones. On the clear nights the con- 

 trasts of light and dark are more vigorous ; on 

 misty nights they are soft, and light and dark 

 pass insensibly into one another. Thus, by 

 night as well as by day, the trees are, if we 

 will let them be, companionable, sociable. As 

 people say about their horses and their dogs, 

 ** They do everything but speak ". 



Such effects as I have been noting were 

 likely to attract the attention of the impres- 

 sionist painter, of the painter who delights 

 himself largely in the changing appearance of 

 objects under varying atmospheric conditions. 

 It has been said that the impressionists have 

 painted atmosphere and little else, and that 

 this is not much. What I have just been say- 



