ccustomed to the speed and
fury of the river's flux, or the miracle of its continuous body. Pan
once played upon their forefathers; and so, by the hands of his river,
he still plays upon these later generations down all the valley of the
Oise; and plays the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell us of the
beauty and the terror of the world.

The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and with tremulous gestures
tell how the river was as cruel as it was strong and cold, and how death
lurked in the eddy underneath the willows. But the reeds had to stand
where they were; and those who stand still are always timid advisers.

*****

The wholeday was showery, with occasional drenching plumps. We were
soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once
more. But there were some calm intervals, and one notably, when we were
skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a
place most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the
riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft
into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full
of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and
nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses
and public monuments? There is nothing so much alive and yet so quiet
as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very
small and bustling by comparison.

I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the most civil
society. An old oak that has been growing where he stands since before
the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately than the greater
part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and
death, like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking lesson in
history? But acres on acres full of such patriarchs contiguously
rooted, their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart
younglings pushing up about their knees; a whole forest, healthy and
beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air; what
is this but the most imposing piece in nature's repertory?

*****

But indeed it is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a
claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of
the air, that emanation from the old trees, that so wonderfully changes
and renews a weary spirit.

*****

With all this in mind, I have often been tempted to put forth the
paradox tha