SOILS. 83 



poaching, quarrelsome "shack," and was now a 

 good husband, a good father, and, I beheve, a 

 good Christian; — the gravel had been converted 

 into loam. And is there not much resemblance 

 between ourselves and our soils — the soil without, 

 and that soil within, which the Psalmist calls '* the 

 ground of the heart"? No two characters, and no 

 two gardens, exactly alike, but all with the same 

 natural propensity to send up wild oats and weeds, 

 and to send their tap-roots downwards ; all re- 

 quiring continuous culture, training, and watchful 

 care ; all dependent, when man has done his best, 

 upon the sunshine and rains of heaven. " Soils," 

 writes Loudon, *' not kept friable by cultivation, 

 soon become hardened;" and so do hearts. But 

 from ourselves, as from our soils, we may eject the 

 evil, introducing the good in its place ; we may 

 grow Roses instead of weeds, if we will. " Upon 

 the same man," writes Richter, who was a florist 

 as well as a philosopher, and seldom appeared in 

 the streets of Baireuth without a flower in his 

 coat, ''as upon a vine-planted mount, there grow 

 more kinds of wine than one : on the south side 

 something little worse than nectar, on the north side 

 something little better than vinegar." But wc may 

 level the hill by humbling our pride, and so lay 

 open the whole vineyard before the summer sun. 



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