292 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



his trees, and shows them to us, in the dim, 

 uncertain light of early morning, in all the 

 brightness of the full sunlight when the mists 

 have cleared away, in the stillness of the noon- 

 day heat, in the glow of evening, in the deep 

 solemnity of the twilight. Richard Jefferies 

 once excused himself for regularly taking the 

 same walk by saying that though always 

 the same it was never the same. I do not 

 know of any series of pictures in a public 

 gallery representing the varied appearance of 

 one scene ; but, certainly, every public collection 

 intended to open the eyes of the people at 

 large to the beauty of nature ought to have 

 such a series. These pictures by Monet are, 

 of course, but one example of the way in which 

 the impressionist painters have seen, and can 

 teach us to see, the ever-varying beauty of 

 nature, and particularly of the trees ; but this 

 one instance must suffice for us here. 



And now I return to English art, and to an 

 artist with a brief note upon whose interpreta- 

 tion of trees I am well content to end this book. 

 Very different from the tree-painting of Hol- 

 man Hunt and Millais, more akin in some 

 ways to that of the impressionists, was the 



