I. MOSS. 19 



in their life, but these have to form the earth out of 

 which all other leaves are to grow. Not to cover the 

 rocks with golden velvet only, but to fill their crannies 

 with the dark earth, through which nobler creatures shall 

 one day seek their being. 



12. " Grant but as many sorts of mind as moss." Pope 

 could not have known the hundredth part of the number 

 of < sorts ' of moss there are ; and I suppose he only chose 

 the word because it was a monosyllable beginning with 

 m, and the best English general expression for despised 

 and minute structures of plants. But a fate rules the 

 words of wise men, which makes their words truer, and 

 worth more, than the men themselves know. No other 

 plants have so endless variety on so similar a structure as 

 the mosses ; and none teach so well the humility of Death. 

 As for the death of our bodies, we have learned, wisely, 

 or unwisely, to look the fact of that in the face. But 

 none of us, I think, yet care to look the fact of the death 

 of our minds in the face. I do not mean death of our 

 souls, but of our mental work. So far as it is good art, 

 indeed, and done in realistic form, it may perhaps not 

 die ; but so far as it was only good thought good, for its 

 time, and apparently a great achievement therein that 

 good, useful thought may yet in the future become a fool- 

 ish thought, and then die quite away, it, and the memory 

 of it, when better thought and knowledge come. But 

 the better thought could not have come if the weaker 

 thought had not come first, and died in sustaining the 



