Of the pleasure and affect of trees no one speaks so wisely as Bacon. Although those who have a feeling for garden literature know his essay on Gardens as the classic of its kind, still many do not recall his thoughts when the planning of a garden is on hand. Too much, I think, is given by the man who is about to make a garden, to his own particular hobby, and many a man wonders why his garden gives him not all the pleasure he expected. You will hear of a man talk of his new Rose beds, of the nursery for Carnations he is in the process of making, of the placing of his Violet frames, of his ideas for a rock garden (I think the distressful feeling for a rockery of clinkers is dead), but you will seldom hear of a man who deliberates quietly for effects of trees, or who thinks of planting fruit trees as ornaments, but always he places them in his kitchen garden, and ignores their value in their other proper places.

Bacon rejoices in his arrangement of gardens for every month of the year, and dwells, rightly, just as much on the pleasure of his trees as in the ordering of his flower beds. Naturally he had not such a large selection of flowers from which to choose as we have to-day, but to-day we neglect the beauty of many trees, and especially the beauty of hedges.

Are there sights in any garden more beautiful than the Almond tree and the Peach tree in blossom, or the sweet trailing Sweetbriar? Bacon would have us notice these, make a feast of these. Also he recommends the beauty of the White Thorn in leaf, the Cherry and the Plum trees in blossom, the Cherry tree in fruit, the Lilac tree, the wonder of the Apple tree, and the Medlar.

Then, again, Bacon touches on a point all too little counted: the perfume of the garden. He says: “And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of musick) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.

“Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells; so that you may walk by a whole row of them and find nothing of their sweetness; yea, though it be in a morning’s dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow; Rosemary little; nor Sweet Marjoram.

“That which above all others yield the sweetest smell in the air is the Violet, especially the White Double Violet which comes twice a year; about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the Musk Rose; then the Strawberry leaves dying, which yield a most excellent cordial smell. Then the flowers of the Vines; it is a little dust, like the dust of a Bent, which grows upon the cluster, in the first coming forth: then the Sweet Briar, then Wallflowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlour or lower chamber window. Then Pinks and Gilly-flowers, especially the matted Pink and Clove Gilly-flower: then the flowers of the Lime tree; then the Honeysuckles, so they be somewhat afar off.

“Of Bean flowers I speak not, because they are field flowers.

“But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three, that is Burnet, Wild Thyme, and Water Mints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them to have the pleasure when you walk or tread. I would add to these one or two more flowers whose perfume is easily yielded. The Heliotrope, which at night will scent a garden; and Stocks, very rich and sweet scented; Tobacco Plant, a heavy sensuous smell; Madonna Lilies, seeming almost to breathe; Evening Primroses; and, after rain when the sun is warm, the leaves of Geraniums, a faint musky smell, very attractive. But of all these the garden holds one perfume more delicious, a scent that, to me at least, is the Queen of Garden scents since it is the breath of the whole garden herself. After a Summer’s day when it has been hot and the lawn has been cut, and the Sun has well baked the earth, if there should come rain in the evening, a soft warm rain pattering at first so that it seems each leaf of flower and tree becomes a drum sounding with rain beats, then it seems the garden breathes deep and draws in great draughts of the delicious coolness. Then after the rain the night comes warm again, and all warm earth smells, and the new cut grass smells also, and every tree and flower join force upon force until the air is filled with a perfume which for want of better names I would call the Odour of Gratitude.”

Furthermore, Bacon speaks of the garden—“The garden is best to be square, encompassed on all four sides with a stately arched hedge.” One rich hedge is there at Bishopsbourne, which it is traditionally supposed was planted by Richard Hooker, of whom Walton writes: “It is a hedge of over one hundred feet in length, from twelve to fourteen feet in height, and some ten feet thick. It is one of the finest Yew hedges in England, a wonderful colour, an amazing strength and beautiful, when it is clipped and trimmed, to look upon.” Of the pleasure and comfort of such hedges, of the health to be gained by regarding them, many people have spoken. There is, surely, something in the tough green life of the Yew, something in its staunchness that conveys a feeling of strength to the mind. I feel this in different degree with every kind of tree, partly no doubt from moments of particular association, from memories that become attached to scenes as they will (curious how scents, arrangements of colour, outlines against a sky, will call up things and thoughts which for the moment have no connection with them. I never see Oranges but I think of a dark passage lined with books, and a cupboard built round with books in shelves. In the cupboard are dishes of fruit, and shapes, all tied up in linen, of fruit cheeses, as damson cheese, and crab-apple cheese, and a cheese made of Quinces and Medlars).

I remember a graveyard in a little Swiss village where every grave had a tiny weeping willow bending over it. It had, for us, infinitely more pathos than the sombreness of many English graveyards. There was a rushing torrent below, for the church and its graveyard was on a height over a river, and the voice of the river sang in the quiet graveyard, like a strong spirit singing in the pride of vigour to those asleep. The little willows bent and shivered in the breeze, looking small and pathetic against the strong small church. Outside the church, all along one wall was a seat very smooth and worn, it faced the graves and the tiny trees, and behind it, on the wall of the church, was a great Wisteria with clusters of pale purple flowers. There were no other trees there, or to be seen from the seat, but these little bending weeping trees. And close by, a hundred yards from the church gate, was the undertaker’s shop, part farm, part garden, part stocked with elm planks. As I passed by the son was making a coffin out in the middle of the road on trestles. Looking back one could see the young man bending earnestly over his work, the sound of his saw ripping the air. Behind him was the grey stone of the church and the forest of little shivering trees over the graves. A little below, just across the river over a covered bridge, was a beer-garden where a family was sitting drinking beer out of tall mugs. They sat, father, mother, sons and daughters, all dressed in black, under Chestnut trees cut down very close and clipped to make alleys of shade. And a little behind them was a forest rising on a hill with great masses of trees all shades of green, and glowing in the light of an afternoon sun. But of all this I carry mostly the memory of those little trees, quiet weeping sentinels, very pathetic.

Trees, especially isolated groups of trees, in towns and cities have a wonderful fascination. The very idea that they burst into bud and leaf in the midst of all the smoke and grime, and the noise and hurry, is health-giving. It brings repose, it brings hope. I believe the trees in town squares get more love than any country trees. They mean so much. It seems so good of them to fight, and to come out year by year clean and fresh and green, and in Winter when they are bare they make a delicate webwork of twigs against the background of soot-covered houses. Then in the Spring when they turn faintly purple there is a haze across the square, and it seems that even the pigeons and the horses on the cab rank feel it, but cannot scarcely believe it. Then, perhaps there is an Almond tree in the square and it will suddenly break out into the most exquisite finery, like the daintiest of women, making the square gay and full of joy. The Spring has come. It is almost unbelievable. And people passing through the square who have forgotten all about the Spring look up suddenly and smile, and say: “Look at the Almond tree. Spring is here.” Those who know the country turn their minds inwards and remember that the brown owls have begun to hoot, that the gossamer is floating, that, here and there yellow and white butterflies are flitting, looking strangely out of season, that the raven is building, and the rooks too, and that all sorts of birds they had forgotten are seen in the land.

After that the big trees in the square become hazy with bursting bud, and one morning, as if some message had been whispered overnight, the far side of the square is only to be seen through a screen of the tenderest green. Bit by bit the leaves comes out, get bright, clean washed by showers, get dingy with the soot. Then comes the fall of the leaf and the crisp curl of it as it changes colour, and the far side of the square begins to show again through bronze-coloured leaves. At last the Winter comes and all that is left is the tracery of boughs and twigs, and heaps of dead, beautiful-coloured leaves beneath the trees. These still provide an interest, for the wind comes and picks them up and whirls them right up into the air in all sorts of amazing dances and games.

In the Winter one last beauty comes. The day has been leaden, sad-coloured, bitterly cold. All the cabmen on the rank stamp with their feet, and swing their arms to keep themselves warm, and there is a little mist where all the horses breathe. And people coming through the square have forgotten the Almond tree, and the look of the big trees when the hot sun splashed gold on their leaves, and they say, looking at the sky, “See how dark it is, it is going to snow.” The snow comes; the sky is darker; the trees stick up looking black, like drawings in pen and ink. Flakes, white flakes, twenty, forty, then a rush—a thousand; the sky full of tiny white flakes, the air full of them whirling down. All sounds begin to be muffled. Horses hoofs beat with a thud on the ground. The sound of voices in the air is deadened. The voices of men encouraging horses sound sharp now and again, or a whip cracks like a shot. The square is covered with snow, every twig is outlined in white, black patches of bark show here and there, and emphasise the dead whiteness. When it has stopped snowing and a watery light comes from the sun all the trees gleam wonderfully, looking like fairy trees. And people passing through the square making beaten tracks in the snow saying, “It is Winter.”

In a country garden there is a tree stands on the end of a lawn. It is an Acacia tree, old, gnarled, and twisted, with Ivy round it, deep Ivy in which thrushes build year after year; there is a stone near by on which the thrushes break the shells of snails, the “tap, tap,” of the birds at work is one of the peaceful sounds that break the silence of the garden.

Under the tree is an oblong mark of pressed grass greener than the rest of the lawn, where the garden-roller rests. And there is a seat under the tree, and a wooden foot-rest by it.

Touch the tree and you go back at once to a picture of a boy, the boy who helped to plant it over a hundred and fifty years before. If you look from the tree across the lawn to the house you will see the very door by which he came out with his father to plant the tree.

The house and the tree have grown old together, both of them have mellowed with the garden and wear a look of old security and calm, and have an air of wise old age.

Up and down the five white steps from the garden path to the house more than five generations have passed, men in wide-skirted coats and full wigs hanging about their ears in great corkscrew curls, men in powdered wigs, rolled stockings, square buckled shoes, men in stocks and immense collars, and big frills to their shirts making them look like gentlemanly fish, down to the man who comes out to day who looks a little old-fashioned, and is square-built like the house, and who parts his hair like the men in Leech’s pictures, and who wears a rim of whisker round his face. And troops of ladies have passed out by that door into the garden in hoops, and sacques, and towers of hair, and crinolines. But no lady comes out now to cut the Lavender hedge, or snip at the Roses. The man is alone. But when he sits alone under the tree, with a spud by his side ready to uproot Plantains from his lawn, he can see troops of the garden ghosts sitting round him under the Acacia tree.

Sometimes there seems to be a sound of the ghostly click of bowls on the lawn, for it is a bowling-green banked up on three sides (the fourth bank has been done away with long ago), and there is a company of gentlemen in their wide shirt sleeves playing bowls. Above them, on the raised terrace next to the house where there is a broad path, a group of old people sit by little tables and drink wine, and smoke, and gossip. And behind them are tall Hollyhocks, and Roses and a tangle of old-fashioned flowers such as Periwinkles and Sweet Williams, and Pinks. The Acacia tree, which grows on the lawn beyond the bowling green, is quite small.

The old man who dreams of these ghosts in his garden recognises them readily because they have stepped out of pictures on his walls, and when they are not haunting the garden are demurely hanging on the oak panels in the old rooms.

Then he can see, if he chooses, a picture of the garden when the acacia tree is quite tall, but still elegant and slender, and in this picture an old, old lady walks down the garden paths. She is dressed in a large hooped skirt with panniers, and has high-heeled shoes, and a perfect tower of hair on her head, and over that a calash hood like the hood over a waggon except that it is black. She carries an ebony stick in a silk-mittened hand, a hand knotted with gout and covered with the mourning rings of her friends. She it was who added largely to the garden, and took in two acres more of land, and planted a row of Elms and Beech trees. She kept the garden as bright and gay as the samplers she worked herself. She had a mania for set beds, and her Tulips were the talk of the county. A long bed of them ran from the house along one bank of the bowling-green to the orchard, and it was arranged in pattern of colours, lines, squares, interlaced geometrical designs of flaming red and scarlet, pink and yellow and white and dull purple. She it was who caused the sundial to be placed in the garden and who found the motto for it, and designed the four triangular beds to go round it, and placed a hedge of Lavender and Rosemary all about it in a square.

The tap of her stick on the paths is one of the ghostly sounds that haunt the place, and sometimes it is difficult to know whether it is a woodpecker, or a thrush breaking open a snail, or her stick that makes such a sharp crisp sound on the Summer air.

There is another sound, too, that the Acacia tree knows well. It is the click of glasses under its boughs. On a table placed under the tree is an array of beautiful cut-glass decanters and a number of glasses which reflect in the polished mahogany surface. Round the table four gentlemen sit with white wigs and elegant lace falls at their throats, and ruffles at their wrists. It is a hot Summer afternoon, and so still that not a Rose leaf of those spread on the lawn stirs. A large white sheet lies on the lawn covered with thousands of rose petals left to dry in the sun, and when they are dry, and have undergone a careful mixture with spices, and have herbs added to them by the mistress of the house, they will be placed in china bowls in all the rooms, and will give out a subtle delicious odour.

The man who is dreaming in his garden can see the four gentlemen as plain as life raising their glasses and touch them before drinking the silent toast. And it is difficult to tell whether it is the gardener striking on his frames by accident, or the chink of glasses that sounds so clearly under the Acacia tree.

Now, in another picture the garden holds, things are somewhat altered. Instead of the big Tulip bed on the lawn there are a number of small cut beds with long beds behind them on either side of a new gravel walk. Instead of the older fashioned borders there are startling colour schemes of carpet-bedding in which the flowers are made to look more like coloured earths than anything. In the long beds, instead of the profusion of Hollyhocks, Sunflowers and bushes of Roses, a primness reigns. A row of blue Lobelia backed by a row of white Lobelia, then scarlet Geraniums, then Calceolarias, then crimson Beet plants, every ten yards a Marguerite Daisy sticks up out of the middle of the bed. Only one rambling border remains, and that is hidden from the view of the house windows, but can just be seen from the seat under the Acacia tree. In it Phlox and Red-hot Pokers, Asters, Anemonies, Moss Rose, and French Marigolds grow profusely, and some merciful sentiment has allowed an old twisted Apple tree to remain there.

The old bowling-green is still beautifully kept, the grass is smooth and fair, not a Daisy or Plantain is there to mar the splendour of the turf. The Acacia tree, now grown old and venerable, spreads out fine branches, and gives delightful shade. Here and there new arches of rustic woodwork, in horrible designs, stretch over the paths, their ugliness partly hidden by climbing Roses of the Seven Sisters kind, or Clematis, or Honeysuckle, or Jasmine. Many trees in the garden are old enough to exchange memories of a hundred years ago; the orchard alone boasts a venerable congregation of old trees, some grey with lichen, some bowed down with the result of full crops.

New ghosts walk the garden paths in crinolines and Leghorn hats, and side curls, talking to gentlemen with glossy side whiskers, peg-top trousers, and tartan waistcoats.

On the bowling-green the new game is laid out, and ladies and gentlemen talk learnedly of bisques, and the correct weight of croquet mallets. There is a fresh sound for the garden, the smack of croquet balls.

And now nearly all the ghosts vanish, and the old man who is sitting under the Acacia tree looks around and sees his garden as it is to-day, fuller of flowers than ever it was, with the hideous set borders done away with, with the little rustic arches pulled down and a pergola, properly built, in their place, and all of the horrors of Early Victorian gardening gone for good, the plaster nymphs and cupids, the tree called a “Monkey Puzzler,” the terrible rockery of clinkers and bad bricks. Here, as in the house, taste has triumphed over fashion. Inside the oak panels that had been covered over with hideous wallpapers are brought to light. The wool mats have vanished, the glass domes over clocks, the worsted bell-pulls, the druggets and the rep curtains all gone for good.

Outside, wonders have been worked in the garden. New beds filled with the choicest Roses and Carnations. Water is now properly conveyed by a sprinkler. The old water-butt, slimy and falling to pieces, gone to give place to a well filled concrete tank of water, kept clean and sweet.

One more ghostly sound left, a sound the lonely man unconsciously listens for as he sits under the tree. On one bough, low growing and strong, shows the marks deep cut where once depended the ropes of a swing. In his ears he can sometimes hear the shouts of children and the creak of the swing ropes, sounds he used to hear in his childhood. And mingled with the children’s laughter he can hear, very faintly, a boy’s voice, his own.

Such is the story of an hundred English Gardens, where trees will tell secrets, and the lawn holds memories, and the paths echo with footsteps out of the past.

The influence literature has on the mind is nowhere more traceable than in a garden. A dozen thoughts spring to the mind gathered out of the store cupboards of remembered reading at the sight of flowers, trees, sunlit walks, dark alleys. Trees call up romantic meetings, hollow trunks where lovers have posted their letters, dark shades where vows have been made, smooth trunks on which are carven twin hearts pierced by a single arrow and crowned with initials cut into the bark. Gloomy recesses under spreading boughs remind one of the hiding places of conspirators, of fugitives.

Sometimes, on a winter’s night, to look into the garden and see the trees toss and shake with an angry wind, or stand bare, bleak, and black against the sparkle of a frosty sky, some written thing comes quickly into the brain almost as if the printed letters stood out clear. There is one scene of winter and trees comes often to me very full and clear. It is from the beginning of “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and heralds the entrance in the story of the immortal Mr. Pecksniff.

“The fallen leaves, with which the ground was strewn, gave forth a pleasant fragrance, and, subduing all harsh sounds of distant feet and wheels, created a repose in gentle unison with the light scattering of seed hither and thither by the distant husbandman, and with the noiseless passage of the plough as it turned up the rich brown earth and wrought a graceful pattern in the stubbled fields. On the motionless branches of some trees autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels; others, stripped of all their garniture, stood, each the centre of its little heap of bright red leaves, watching their slow decay; others again still wearing theirs, had them all crunched and crackled up, as though they had been burnt. About the stems of some were piled, in ruddy mounds, the apples they had borne that year; while others (hardy evergreens this class) showed somewhat stern and gloomy in their vigour, as charged by nature with the admonition that it is not to her more sensitive and joyous favourites she grants the longest term of life. Still athwart their darker boughs the sunbeams struck out paths of deeper gold; and the red light, mantling in among their swarthy branches, used them as foils to set its brightness off, and aid the lustre of the dying day.

“A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt in everything.

“An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music. The withering leaves, no longer quiet, hurried to and fro in search of shelter from its chill pursuit; the labourer unyoked the horses, and, with head bent down, trudged briskly home beside them; and from the cottage windows lights began to glance and wink upon the darkening fields.

“It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor creatures as the fallen leaves; but this wind, happening to come up with a great heap of them just after venting its humour on the insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the extremity of their distress. Nor was this good enough for its malicious fury; for not content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them, and hunted them into the wheelwright’s saw-pit, and below the planks and timbers in the yard, and, scattering the sawdust in the air it looked for them underneath, and when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and followed on their heels!

“The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase it was; for they got into unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, and where their pursuer kept them eddying round and round at his pleasure; and they crept under the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to the sides of hayricks like bats; and tore in at open chamber windows, and cowered close to hedges; and, in short, went anywhere for safety. But the oddest feat they achieved was, to take advantage of the sudden opening of Mr. Pecksniff’s front door, to dash wildly down his passage, with the wind following close upon them, and finding the back door open, incontinently blew out the lighted candle held by Miss Pecksniff, and slammed the front door against Mr. Pecksniff, who was at that moment entering, with such violence, that in the twinkling of an eye, he lay on his back at the bottom of the steps. Being by this time weary of such trifling performances, the boisterous rover hurried away rejoicing, roaring over moor and meadow, hill and flat, until it got out to sea, where it met with other winds similarly disposed, and made a night of it.”

Is not this wonderful and immortal passage as much a part of the Charm of Gardens as the most delectable poetry on the perfumed air of a summer night?

Often, when the logs are crackling on the hearth, one hears those hunted leaves come banging on the window panes, those gaunt trees tossing in the wind. When all the garden lies cold and bare and stripped of green, the trees roar out an answer to the wind, an hundred garden voices swell the storm, and you sit happy by your fireside and dream new colours for the garden beds; and where a white frost sparkles on the earth, and trees lift up bare fingers to the sky, you see deep wealth of green, and jewelled borders brim full of spring flowers, and there a set of bulbs you have nursed, come out sweet in green sheathes, and here a tree, now naked, clothed in young green.

That for the night. For the morning, trailing clouds of mist over the trees like fairy shawls alive with dew-diamonds, each dew-drop reflecting its tiny world. The trees, the world, the garden still asleep, or half asleep, until the sun throws off the counterpane of clouds and springs into the skies.

It is at that time, before the sun is awake, the trees look strange as sleeping things look strange, with a counterfeit of death, so still are they. And in the Spring when the orchard is a pale ghost before the sun is up, a man would swear it had been covered up at night in silver smoke, or gossamer, or fairy silk that the sun tears into weeping shreds that drip and drip and give the grass a bath.

But of the effect of trees as a spiritual support no man is at variance with another. That they give courage, and help and hope, that the green sight of them is good as being reminder that Heaven is kind, and that the Winter is not always, no man doubts but, perhaps, fears to voice, feeling his neighbour will call out at him for a worshipper of Pan and of strange gods. But to the garden dweller, or to him who must perforce make his garden of one tree in a dusty court, and of one glass of flowers on his desk, these things have voices, and they are kindly voices, saying, “Despair not,” and “Regard me how I grow upright through the seasons,” and also “Give shade and shelter to all things and men equally as I do, without distinction or difference, and if the grass gives a couch, fair and embroidered with flowers, so do I give a roof of infinite variety, and a shade from the sun, and a shelter from the wind.” And again, “If a man know a tree to love it he will understand much of men, and of birds, and beasts and of all living things. And of greater things too, for in the branches is other fruit than the fruit of the tree. Just as the rainbow is set in the sky for a promise, so is fruit in a tree set there; and the leaves show how orderly is the Great Plan; and the branches show the strength of slender things, and of little things, so that a man may know how Heaven has its roots in earth, and its crest in the clouds. And a man who holds to earth with one hand, and reaches at the stars with the other, in that span he encompasses all that may be known if he but see it. But men are blind, and do not see the sky but as sky, and do not see the stars but as balls of fire, or the green grass but as a carpet, or the flowers but as a combination of chemical accidents. But over all, and through all, and in all is God, Who still speaks with Adam in the Garden.”

These things are to be learnt of trees both great and small, withered and young, sapling and Oak of centuries. And they are to be learnt also in the dust on a butterfly’s wing; or of a blade of grass; or of a hemp seed. But men are deaf, and hear no voice but the voice of water in a rushing stream; and no sound but the sound of leaves stirring when the wind rests in a tree; and no voice speaking in a blaze of flowers who sing praises night and day in scented voices.

A tree is not dumb, and the Creeping Briar is not dumb, and the Rose has a voice like the voice of a woman rejoicing that she is fair. But men are dumb, for though their hearts speak, all tongues are not touched with fire.

So may trees be a solace in trouble, and secrets may be whispered to bushes of Rosemary and Lavender, who will yield their secret solace of peace, as the tree yields strength. All these things are written in a garden in coloured letters of gold, and green, and crimson, in blue and purple, orange and grey, and they are written for a purpose. And a man may seek diligently for the secret of this great book and find nothing if he seek with his head alone. He will tell of the growth of trees, their years, their nature, their sickness. He will learn of the power of the sap which flows down from the tips of leaves to the great tree roots all snug in the soil; and he will learn of the veins in the leaves, and the properties of the gum of the bark, yet will he never learn that of which the tree speaks always, night and day—praising.

Of what is the colour of green that the earth’s best page is made of it? Of what is the colour of young green that it brings, unbidden, tender thoughts? It is more than the gold of Corn, and the brown of ploughed earth, and the glory of flowers. By it comes peace to the eyes, and through the eyes to the heart of man, so that men say of youth and the times of youth that they are salad days; and of old age, if so be it is a fine old age, that it is green. It is the colour of the body as blue is the colour of the soul. The sky and the sea are blue, and they are things of mystery, deep and profound, and because of their great depth and profundity they are blue. The grass and the trees, and the leaves of flowers, and blades of young Corn are green. They are mysterious things but they are nearer to man, and he has them to his hand to be near them, and get quick comfort of them.

And Daisies are the stars of the grass, as stars are the Daisies of Heaven; and if a man look long at the stars set out orderly in the sky he may become fearful, for God may seem far off and difficult; yet if he be near he may pick a Daisy and take his fill of comfortable things, for God will seem near and His voice in the Daisy.

Yet many a man will walk over a field of grass pressing the Daisies with his feet, and take no heed of them, or of the stars over above his head; and the night and the day will be to him but light and darkness, and the stars but lanterns to show him home, and the Daisies but flowers of the field. But if he be a man who sees all, and in everything can feel the finger and pulse of God, his staff will blossom in his hand, and he will go on his way rejoicing.

In this way can man regard the trees in his garden, and speak with them, loving them, and learning of them, for learning is all of love. And he may yet be an ordinary man, not poet, or artist, but he must be mystic because he has the true sight. Many a man, stockbroker, clerk, painter, labourer, soldier, or whatever he seems to be, has his real being in these moments, and they are revealed through love or sorrow, but not by hard learning or text-books.