234 The Fall of the Leaf 



of a farm. Yet the fall of a bough or bole is very 

 rare in proportion to the frequency with which the 

 elm is planted about dwellings in the south of 

 England ; and year by year the beauty of its tints 

 of charred yellow and glowing orange and amber 

 illuminates the homestead and its surroundings 

 with all the splendours of the turbulent autumn 

 sunsets, that burn so low and near to earth with the 

 same fierce tones of soot and flame. 



When, on a day of autumn wildness, the dark 

 shade beneath a tall avenue of close-set elms is 

 thick with flying gold, or all the scarlet and orange 

 of a bank of hillside beeches is whipped and flung 

 abroad by the lash of the Atlantic rain, there is a 

 strange sense of a prodigal wastefulness in nature, 

 and of a spirit of destruction that seems wholly 

 opposed to the slow, maturing patience that is 

 characteristic of her rule. To see the leaves of 

 the long spring and summer, that were nursed to 

 birth and to full verdure at such pains of sunshine 

 and fostering shower, now stripped and wasted 

 abroad in the passion of a single hour, is almost 

 like witnessing the sack of some imperial city by 

 barbarians of the North. The wildness of such 

 an hour brings a kind of intoxication to the blood. 

 Yet, in reality, the fall of the autumn leaf, whether 

 it comes tumultuously in the gale of a single night 

 or is completed gradually and slowly in calm and 

 equable decay, is no mere blind aberration of 

 destructive violence, but simply one stage in the 

 continual progress of life. The leaves of the old 

 year fall, because the young buds of the new 



