The Dewberry. 215 



of the word would seem to have been a gleaming, as if 

 with soft and silvery light. Then it became an epithet 

 of the sea, as in Iliad xvi. 34. Then it moved on to the 

 olive-tree ; then to living creatures, as to the Nereids, the 

 " sea-green sisters of the deep," who had bright pearls 

 mingled with their beautiful hair, and whose sweet pro- 

 vince it was to calm the waters when turbulent ; then it 

 moved on to eyes eyes of the lovely and inexpressible 

 hue which some poet has fittingly described as the 

 " colour of gladness " that rare and subtle combination 

 of azure and grey which rejoiced men in Aphrodite's, 

 which helped to gain for the Muses that most picturesque 

 of descriptions, " Jove's nine azure-eyed flower-producing 

 daughters," and which, thank God, has never been lost 

 to the world. So delicious is the upgrowth in the signifi- 

 cation of words that were cradled in poetic thought. 

 And sweet is it to note how in the end they can fall 

 back upon some simple object of wild nature, a term 

 which transports the mind to the time of the bright 

 fables of antiquity, settling down upon a little wayside 

 fruit, our Rubus casius. 



The fruit of the one other distinct species of British 

 Rubus, the R. saxatilis, or Rock Bramble, corresponds 

 with that of the dewberry in respect of the flowers and 

 the various sizes of the drupels, but in this one they 

 are scarlet, and in flavour agreeably acid. The habit of 

 growth is peculiar, a few prostrate branches running to 

 the length of a yard from the centre of growth, and a 

 few others growing erect, to the height of ten or twelve 



