green; and, dotted
among the pines, or standing by themselves in rocky clearings, the
delicate, snow-white trunks of birches, spreading out into snow-white
branches yet more delicate, and crowned and canopied with a purple haze
of twigs. And then a long, bare ridge of tumbled boulders, with bright
sandbreaks between them, and wavering sandy roads among the bracken and
brown heather. It is all rather cold and unhomely. It has not the
perfect beauty, nor the gem-like colouring, of the wood in the later
year, when it is no more than one vast colonnade of verdant shadow,
tremulous with insects, intersected here and there by lanes of sunlight
set in purple heather. The loveliness of the woods in March is not,
assuredly, of this blowsy rustic type. It is made sharp with a grain of
salt, with a touch of ugliness. It has a sting like the sting of bitter
ale; you acquire the love of it as men acquire a taste for olives. And
the wonderful clear, pure air wells into your lungs the while by
voluptuous inhalations, and makes the eyes bright, and sets the heart
tinkling to a new tune--or, rather, to an old tune; for you remember in
your boyhood something akin to this spirit of adventure, this thirst for
exploration, that now takes you masterfully by the hand, plunges you
into many a deep grove, and drags you over many a stony crest. It is as
if the whole wood were full of friendly voices calling you farther in,
and you turn from one side to another, like Buridan's donkey, in a maze
of pleasure.

Comely beeches send up their white, straight, clustered branches, barred
with green moss, like so many fingers from a half-clenched hand. Mighty
oaks stand to the ankles in a fine tracery of underwood; thence the tall
shaft climbs upward, and the great forest of stalwart boughs spreads out
into the golden evening sky, where the rooks are flying and calling. On
the sward of the Bois d'Hyver the firs stand well asunder with outspread
arms, like fencers saluting; and the air smells of resin all around, and
the sound of the axe is rarely still. But strangest of all, and in
appearance oldest of all, are the dim and wizard upland districts of
young wood. The ground is carpeted with fir-tassel, and strewn with
fir-apples and flakes of fallen bark. Rocks lie crouching in the
thicket, guttered with rain, tufted with lichen, white with years and
the rigours of the changeful seasons. Brown and yellow butterflies are
sown and carried away again by the l