CHAPTER L 



MOSS. 



DENMARK HILL, 3rd November, 1868. 



1. IT is mortifying enough to write, but I think thua 

 much ought to be written, concerning myself, as 'the 

 author of Modern Painters.' In three months I shall be 

 fifty years old : and I don't at this hour ten o'clock in 

 the morning of the two hundred and sixty-eighth day of 

 my forty-ninth year know what ' moss ' is. 



There is nothing I have more intended to know some 

 day or other. But the moss ' would always be there ' ; 

 and then it was so beautiful, and so difficult to examine, 

 that one could only do it in some quite separated time of 

 happy leisure which came not. I never was like to 

 have less leisure than now, but I will know what moss is, 

 if possible, forthwith. 



2. To that end I read preparatorily, yesterday, what 

 account I could find of it in all the botanical books in the 

 house. Out of them all, I get this general notion of a 

 moss, that it has a fine fibrous root, a stem surrounded 

 with spirally set leaves, and produces its fruit in a small 

 case, under a cap. I fasten especially, however, on a sen- 



