WARWICKSHIRE WOODLANDS. 55 
year. Life there seems to take a richer, fuller 
tone than elsewhere. The trees strike their roots 
deep down in the soil, and send up their huge 
limbs heavenwards, forming shadows still and 
deep in the summer time. The thickets are 
musical above with the song of birds, and beneath 
lies spread a fairylike carpet of a million wild 
flowers. There the lark sings her sweetest song, 
soaring heavenwards, and the nightingales fill the 
evening air with melody ; and man, living amidst 
scenes like this, insensibly shapes his life and 
inner thoughts into unison with the scenes around 
him, and, as Warwickshire Will has it — 
" Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks. 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 
The converse he holds with them is earnest and 
true ; and whether the biting autumn wind makes 
him steel his body to endure, or the summer air 
wooes him to gentler thoughts of soft indulgence, 
he feels in his inmost man, This is no flattery." 
The intellect of the people bears analogy to this 
outer life. It may have no wide range, there may 
