enhances rather than conceals the beauty of the statue.

Or at a still later hour, over against the harvest moon, see them rise
congruous with the gentle night, casting round them not palls of ominous
gloom, but clear translucent shadows sifted through traceries of leafage
which do but veil the light. And what variety of form and structure
sunders them from other trees, what irregular persuasive grace. Some are
tall and straight, springing like fountains arrested in the moment when
they turn to fall; others bend oblique without one perpendicular line,
every branch by some subtle instinct evading the hard angles of
earth-measurement as unmeet for that which frames the sky; others again
spread to all the quarters of heaven their vast umbrageous arms. No
trees are so companionable as the elms to the red-roofed homestead which
nestles at their feet and is glad for them. Seen from a distance, how
delightful is this association, how delicate the contrast of tile and
leaf and timbered barn, each lending some complement to the other's
fairest imperfection. Perhaps there will be a whole line of distinct
trees, and then you will see as it were a cliff-side of verdure in
which, beneath the billowy curves of lit foliage, there open caverns and
cool deeps of shadow fit for a Dryad's rest.

To know the elm-tree you must not come too near, for it too is wild and
does not reveal its nature lightly; you may be cooler in the shadow of
the beech or stand drier beneath the red-stemmed leaves of the sycamore.
Yet it suffers the clinging ivy; it was beloved of poets in old days,
and painters love it still. It has not the walnut's vivid green nor the
rare flush that lights up the pine-stem. Its leaves are rough and of no
brilliance; its bark is rugged also. But in life the familiar guardian
of home meadows, it has stood by our fathers' landmarks from generation
to generation, and when fallen and hewn and stacked it sheds a
fragrance which, wherever perceived in after years, brings back memories
of wanderings in deep lanes and of the great dim barns where we played
in childhood. In the dull winter days when only yews and cypresses wear
their leaves, I sometimes wander to a place whose walls are hung with
the works of many a seer and lover of elms; there seated before a few
small frames I give them thanks for having read the dear trees truly,
and glorified a close and barren gallery with all the breezes and
colours of the fields: I am beyond al