THE GREEN WORLD 223 



a twig of the beech in the third, the green and bronze, 

 phase, without playing with the thought whether in 

 the scheme of things beauty may not be in itself a 

 powerful law. The way in which beauty is urged, 

 thrust on our constant notice, in a thousand utterly 

 different forms, by Nature, is so thought-worthy. Is 

 it easy to believe that the wonderful beauty and 

 delicacy of the beech twig has no existence outside 

 our own fancy, that it is unessential, of no world 

 concern ? 



By the time the beeches are all pure green the 

 busiest working day in green life is near. It falls, I 

 think, according to the nature of the season, in late 

 May or early June. It is not the longest day of the 

 year which is the day of heaviest work in the factory of 

 Nature ; for by midsummer the sap is well up in the 

 bulk of things, and the machinery, though still active, 

 must begin to slacken. But think what the motive 

 force must be in May ! with every hedgerow, field, 

 and wood growing full green, and the struggle for 

 space and light at its height, a struggle which has no 

 sound or motion to our ear or eye, but not the less is 

 huge in will strength, in its insistent push and uprush. 

 Order and disorder, cosmos and chaos, working to- 

 gether make the summer green. In this strange 

 union of opposites, which is common to green life in 

 every square yard of the earth, it is only the disorder, 

 seemingly the blind chance in things, that appears 

 at a glance. Take a hedgerow facing south, or the 



