Page:Romance & Reality 3.pdf/303

Rh bough which is blown against your face leaves no trace of moisture behind. We live in an age of fact, not fiction;—for every effect is assigned some simple and natural cause;—we dream no dreams of spiritual visitings; and omens are fast sinking into the disbelief of oracles: else what a mystical language is that of the leaves! No marvel that in the days of old, when Imagination walked the world as its own domain, every ancient trunk had The hamadryades have gone, like the golden fancies of which they were engendered—morning dreams of a young world scarce awake, but full of freshness and beauty. Yet often will the thought, or rather the fancy, come across me, that this wailing but most musical noise—heard in the dim evening, when every tree has a separate sound like a separate instrument, and every leaf a differing tone like the differing notes—is the piteous lament of some nymph pent within the gray and mossy trunk whence she may never more emerge in visible loveliness. Edward—for he was the rider—now turned from the road, and entered the park by a small