18 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



ever so wild and dreary in its aspect, but wears for him the semblance 

 of a home. Where there is a blade of grass, a living leaf, a bird, or 

 a water-runnel edged with moss, there the good angels of his destiny 

 seem to cluster, and there, if need be, he can lie down peacefully to 

 rest. It is for green things the mariner pines, and for which he first 

 looks when islands heave above the foam. It is the greenness of his 

 native land which endears him to it, and makes home ever a sweet 

 memory to his heart and a dear name on his lips ; and when the 

 green shores of an unknown country life themselves above the wave, 

 the sweet pictures of his childish haunts come back upon him, and he 

 learns the great truth, that with greenness and natural beauty, child- 

 hood survives as long as man remains. It is just in this fulness of 

 heart that Hakluyt, the old voyager, tells his artless tale : — " This 

 country seemed very goodly and delightsome to all of vs, in regard 

 of the greennesse and beauty thereof, and we judged it to be very 

 populous within the land." * 



There is a moral beauty about green things which renders them 

 mute teachers of the noblest lessons. Dear to man are they as things 

 which solace him and beguile life of its haishness ; which surround his 

 home with poetry, and fill his heart with peace. How dreary would be 

 the lot of man in a world where green things were not ; with no green 

 valleys dotted with homely sheep, no broad savannas rustling a million 

 golden tassels in the wind ; no flowery meadows folding us in their 

 grassy arms ; and no magic chain of love-like songs and bleatings, 

 and tender associations, and soft stirrings of the heart, filling the 

 soul with joy upon joy, till life itself becomes but as an hour of sun- 

 shine. 



There is a moral beauty and a teaching for the spirit in all the 

 budding things of the green out-door world, which to the wise man 

 aflford inward satisfaction, and never fail to renew his hope. Their 

 very frailness and evanescence hint of our short stay here, as their 

 renewed growth with each return of spring S3anbolises the spring season 

 to which we shall awake in another world. The story of the fig-tree 

 but emblems the condition of man : if he be without fruit he shall be 

 accursed ; if he do naught for the service of men, he shall be a lep- 

 rosy of barrenness, and fall under the doom of the fig-tree which the 

 Lord condemned. 



Voyage, &c., vol. 3, fol. 339. Francis Valla. 



