AUTUMN LIGHTS AND SHADES. 191 



finding the clearest tones with which to touch in 

 the bright high lights crisply and lightly, so that 

 the colours may not be worked in the least degree, 

 it proves all to no purpose. 



One look at the canvas, one more look at the 

 woodlands, with their living glorious colours, and 

 the palette-knife scrapes off all that has been so 

 carefully placed on. Easel and canvas are strapped 

 up, and the would - be painter departs, muttering 

 something about another time. 



That time is still far away : no artist, dead or 

 living, has ever adequately represented the glow 

 of the fall. 



The trunks of the giant beeches, flashing silver- 

 grey in the sunlight, as it falls now here and now 

 there, are spangled from their mighty roots, for 

 some distance up the smooth stems, with the richest 

 golden - green moss ; and the dead leaves on the 

 ground beneath, madder-brown in tone, throw the 

 whole up in fine relief. 



There is a depth of three feet and more, in some 

 places, of pure leaf-mould ; generation after genera- 

 tion of dead leaves lies there. Where some great 

 tree, after living his life, has crashed down, huge 



