It has been laid waste, that little valley which, in its delicate and
austere loveliness, was rarer and more perfect than any picture or
poem. Those oaks, ivy garlanded like Maenads, which guarded the
shallow white weirs whence the stream leaps down; those ilexes, whose
dark, loose boughs hung over the beryl pools like hair of drinking
nymphs; those trees which were indeed the living and divine owners of
that secluded place, dryads and oreads older and younger than any
mortals,--have now been shamefully stripped, violated and maimed,
their shorn-off leafage, already withered, gathered into faggots or
trodden into the mud made by woodcutters' feet in the place of violets
and tender grasses and wild balm; their flayed bodies, hacked grossly
out of shape, and flung into the defiled water until the moment when,
the slaughter and dishonour and profanation being complete, the
dealers' carts will come cutting up the turf and sprouting reeds, and
carry them off to the station or timber-yard. The very stumps and
roots will be dragged out for sale; the earthy banks, raw and torn,
will fall in, muddying and clogging that pure mountain brook; and the
hillside, turning into sliding shale, will dam it into puddles with
the refuse from the quarries above. And thus, for less guineas than
will buy a new motor or cover an hour of Monte Carlo, a corner of the
world's loveliness and peace will be gone as utterly as those chairs
and tables and vases and cushions which the harlot in Zola's novel
broke, tore, and threw upon the fire for her morning's amusement.