The effect of light on his native ice-fields has not escaped the Switzer: "The sun shines on the glacier, and in the heavens shine the stars; O thou, my chiefest joy, how I love thee!" A Czech balladist describes two chieftains travelling towards the sunrise, with mountains to the right and to the left, on whose summit stands the dawn. Again, he represents a band of warriors halting on the spurs of the forest, while before them lies Prague, silent and asleep, with the Veltava shrouded in morning mist; beyond, the mountains turn blue; beyond the mountains the east is illuminated. In Bohemia mountains are spoken of as blue or grey or shadowy; in Servia they are invariably called green. Servians and Bulgarians cannot conceive a mountain that is not a wood or a wood that is not a mountain; with them the two words mean one and the same thing. The charm and beauty of the combination of hill and forest are often dwelt upon in the Balkan brigand songs; outlaws and their poets have been among the keenest appreciators of nature. Who thinks of Robin Hood apart from the greenwood tree? Who but has smelt the very fragrance of the woods as he said over the lines?-- "In somer when the shawes be sheyn And leves be large and long, Hit is full merry in feyre foreste To here the foulys song." The Sclav or semi-Sclav bandit has not got the high moral qualities of our "most gentle theefe," but, like him, he has suffered the heat, the cold, the hunger, the fatigue of a life in the good greenwood, and, like him, he has tasted its joys. Take the ballad called the "Wintering of the Heidukes." Three friends sit drinking together in the mountains under the trees; they sip the ruddy wine, and discuss what they shall do in the coming winter, when the leaves have fallen and only the naked forest is left. Each decides where he will go, and the last one says: "So soon as the sad winter is passed, when the forest is clad again in leaves and the earth in grass and flowers, when the birds sing in the bushes on the banks of the Save and the wolves are heard in the hills--then shall we meet as to-day." Spring returns, the forest is decked again with leaves, the black earth with flowers and grass, the bird sings in the bush, the wolves howl on the rocky heights; two of the friends meet at the trysting place--the third comes not; he has been slain. This is only one _Pesma_ out of a hundred in which the mountain background is faithfully sketched. Sometimes the forest figures as a personage. The Balkan mountaineer more than half believes that as he loves it, so does it love him. The instinct which insists that "love exempteth nothing loved from love" has been a great myth-germinator, and when myths die out, it still finds some niche in the mind of man wherein to abide. It may seem foolish when applied to inanimate objects; it must seem false in its human application: but reasoning will not kill it. Is there some truth