sweet. It is the past in the wood, and Time here never grows any
older. Could you bring back the red stag--as you may easily in
fancy--and place him among the tall brake, and under the beeches, he
should not know that a day had gone by since the stern Roundheads
shot down the last of his race hereabouts in Charles I.'s days. For
the leaves are turning as they turned then to the altered colour of
the sun's rays as he declines in his noonday arch, lower and lower
every day; his rays are somewhat yellower than in dry hot June; a
little of the tint of the ripe wheat floats in the sunshine. To this
the woods turn. First, the nut-tree leaves drop, and the green brake
is quickly yellow; the slender birch becomes lemon on its upper
branches; the beech reddens; by-and-by the first ripe acorn falls,
and there's as much cawing of the rooks in the oaks at acorn-time as
at their nests in the elms in March.

All these things happened in the old, old time before the red stags
were shot down; the leaves changed as the sunbeams became less
brilliantly white; the woodcocks arrived; the mice had the last of
the acorns which had fallen, and which the rooks and jays and
squirrels had spared for them after feasting to the full of their
greediness. This ancient oak, whose thick bark, like cast-iron for
ruggedness at the base, has grown on steadily ever since the last
deer bounded beneath it, utterly heedless of the noisy rattle of
machinery in the northern cities, unmoved by any shriek of engine,
or hum, or flapping of loose belting, or any volume of smoke
drifting into the air--I wish that the men now serving the great
polished wheels, and works in iron and steel and brass, could
somehow be spared an hour to sit under this ancient oak in Thardover
South Wood, and come to know from actual touch of its rugged bark
that the past is living now, that Time is no older, that Nature
still exists as full as ever, and to see that all the factories of
the world have made no difference, and therefore not to pin their
faith to any theory born and sprung up among the crush and
pale-faced life of modern time; but to look for themselves at the
rugged oak-bark, and up to the sky above the highest branches, and
to take an acorn and consider its story and possibilities, and to
watch the sly squirrel coming down, as they sit quietly, to play
almost at their feet. That they might gather to themselves some of
the leaves--mental and spiritual leaves--of the anci