nce-heads against the sky. Most modest little trees,
with their scant berries and rare pale buds; not trees at all, I fancy
some people saying. Yet of more consequence, somehow, in their calm
disregard of wind, their cheerful, resolute soaring, than any other
trees for miles; masters of that little valley, of its rocks, pools,
and overhanging foliage; sovereign brothers and rustic demi-gods for
whom the violets scent the air among the withered grass in March, and,
in May, the nightingales sing through the quivering star night.

Of all southern trees, most simple and aspiring; and certainly most
perfect among evergreens, with their straight, faintly carmined
shoots, their pliable strong leaves so subtly rippled at the edge, and
their clean, dry fragrance; delicate, austere, alert, serene; such are
the bay-trees of Apollo.

IV.

I have gladly accepted, from the hands of that tram-way road-mender,
the Bay Laurel--_Laurus Nobilis_--for a symbol of all art, all poetry,
and all poetic and artistic vision and emotion. It has summed up,
better than words could do, what the old Herbals call the _virtues_,
of all beautiful things and beautiful thoughts. And it has suggested,
I hope, the contents of the following notes; the nature of my attempt
to trace the influence which art should have on life.

V.

Beauty, save by a metaphorical application of the word, is not in the
least the same thing as Goodness, any more than beauty (despite
Keats' famous assertion) is the same thing as Truth. These three
objects of the soul's pursuit have different natures, different laws,
and fundamentally different origins. But the energies which express
themselves in their pursuit--energies vital, primordial, and necessary
even to man's physical survival--have all been evolved under the same
stress of adaptation of the human creature to its surroundings; and
have therefore, in their beginnings and in their ceaseless growth,
been working perpetually in concert, meeting, crossing, and
strengthening one another, until they have become indissolubly woven
together by a number of great and organic coincidences.

It is these coincidences which all higher philosophy, from Plato
downwards, has strained for ever to expound. It is these coincidences,
which all religion and all poetry have taken for granted. And to three
of these it is that I desire to call attention, persuaded as I am that
the scientific progress of our day will make short work of all