104 OUR WOODLAND TREES. 
spring, the glory of summer, and the mellow 
beauty of autumn are all gone. The leaves have 
fallen, and lie scattered and dead on hill-side 
and in hollow. Yet Trees are lovely still: for 
then we can see and admire, in full perfection, 
the exquisite configuration of the forms upon 
which the summer foliage clusters—the magnifi- 
cence of their trunks and limbs, the graceful 
proportions of their branches and boughs, and 
the fine tracery of their twigs and sprays— 
defined, as we can often see them, with delicacy 
and beauty and with singular clearness against 
the blue expanse of a wintry sky. 
