198 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



by the next spell of stormy weather, and St. Martins 

 summer shines on a barer world. The mornings are 

 heavy with white mist, through which the heavier leaves 

 pat the earth as they are loosened by the rising 

 temperature after the night's frost. As the pale blue sky 

 appears through the melting mist overhead, the crowns 

 of the elms stand out in masses of gold and amber and 

 smoky yellow. Though the range of colour is much nar- 

 rower than in the beeches three weeks earlier, the increased 

 simplicity of this Martinmas display only adds to its effect. 

 It is in accordance with the whole spirit of the time, when 

 summer stands on the thinnest of platforms separating it 

 from the dark gulf beneath, and yet never looks more fair. 

 The mist clings all day to the remoter distances in an almost 

 invisible film, and dwells transparently even in the hollows 

 among the upper boughs of the elms. We feel that all this 

 beauty hangs by a tenure as frail as the mist, and that it will 

 be destroyed by a single night of storm. The finest of all 

 the pictures formed by the elms at this time is where they 

 stand massed round one of the large black red-tiled barns 

 which are common under the flanks of the chalk hill-ranges. 

 Elms grow to a great height and volume of foliage on the 

 first belt of loam under the chalk-hills, and dominate the 

 open landscape. Their golden boughs make a magnificent 

 contrast of colour with the long red roof and black sides of 

 the wooden barns ; and there are just those minor repetitions 

 of colour which bring out the force of a general contrast 

 most picturesquely. All the year round a crust of yellow 

 and orange lichen mottles the tiles ; but now it falls into a 

 new harmony with the boughs above, and with the leaves 

 that drift upon the roof. The sooty spots that fleck the 

 yellow elm-leaves answer in the same way to the barn's black 

 timbers below. Every feature of the English countryside 



