Book Description

Excerpt from Sylvan Winter: With Seventy Illustrations Burnham Beeches, and have now the happiness of living amid my own green retreats. TO the writer's mind, therefore, for the moment, it was the especial verdancy Of spring and summer which suggested the picture of sylvan scenery and sylvan scenery, to the popular mind, is an expression which mostly implies the leafiness of the seasons that precede the fall. Yet the ancient worship of trees must rather have been suggested by the stern wintry aspect of the monarchs of the woods, than by the softer appearance Of their summer clothing - for the strength and power and grandeur, if the idea may be allowed, of the tree-form would be more conspicuous when divested of foliage. Similarly the grandeur and solemnity of the forest would more powerft affect the feelings when the great trunks and huge limbs of the sylvan giants stood out clearly defined against the wintry sky. The 'sacred liant' for the venerated Mistletoe was a winter rite - for that curious parasitic evergreen could not have been discovered amongst the summer mass of green leaves; and the 'sacred fire' of the Druids, communicated from the burning Yule-log. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.