The leaves of the street-side tree flutter bright emerald green through the whole night (out of town the discolouring night) of leafy summer. That local colour is never quenched, as human blushes are quenched at night. It rather takes a more conspicuous quality, under the closeness of the electric light; it is sharply green. Whereas the day has its mists and veils, and may at times darken a tree nearly black, by setting the sky alight behind it, the night has none of these shadows. The light of night is stationary and unchangeable, and there are some solitary trees here and there that undergo the unshifting illumination at the closest quarters; the light that knows no hours and makes no journey gleams near upon the motion of the leaves and glosses their faces. It is beforehand with the twilight, so that the dusk when it comes finds the place taken, and it will not let the tree go until the light of day flows in fully, and dawn is over. [Illustration: KENSINGTON GARDENS.] The sharp green of the plane-tree is never covered, nor are the delicately sprinkled spots of the poplar-leaves mingled and massed, in these solitary citizen trees. It is in the avenues and glades of Kensington Gardens that Night has her way. There amends are made for the common day by a double mystery. Not a tree is so much as to be known by name; all kinds sigh together in the dark. The mass is sombre and alive, but betrays neither leaf nor colour. As violently as the spirit of the woods was driven away, through all the long daylight, by the sound, the breath, the blackness, and the stamp and seal of London, which permit nothing visible--not a blade of grass--to go unmarked by the proprietorship of this despotic city; so swiftly as the spirit of the woods was hooted and stared into banishment by day, so quickly, so intently, and in such a union of multitude does it softly return by night. Solitude comes, the movement of the forest comes, and remoteness, which by day must be sought where it abides, comes at a stride to London, and sits in the branches of the trees. Profound is the forest and august the sky whence the great and melancholy spirit of the woods comes to restore these daily altered elms.