woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their favourite places,
utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the hollows of the
wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed whatever, but
then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal of noise;
but the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as
savage as it will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more
senseless than a pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day,
though the printing press has set a foot on every threshold,
numbers bow the knee when they hear the roar the timid dove does
not heed. So trustful are the doves, the squirrels, the birds of
the branches, and the creatures of the field. Under their tuition
let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face death itself as
calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so content
with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by
reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what
we so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a
nearly perfect life.

The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing
is shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the
rim of a wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against
it while feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone
or smoothed down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place.
There are no crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught
anywhere have been carried away by birds for their nests. The
trunk is smooth and columnar, hard as iron. A hundred times the
mowing-grass has grown up around it, the birds have built their
nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the acorns dropped from
the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by artificial hours or
by the seasons, but it is longer still in another way. The