20 PEOSERPINA. 



better. If we think honestly, our thoughts will not only 

 live usefully, but even perish usefully like the moss 

 and become dark, not without due service. But if we 

 think dishonestly, or malignantly, our thoughts will die 

 like evil fungi, dripping corrupt dew.' 



13. But farther. If you have walked moorlands enough 

 to know the look of them, you know well those flat spaces 

 or causeways of bright green or golden ground between 

 the heathy rock masses ; which signify winding pools 

 and inlets of stagnant water caught among the rocks ; 

 pools which the deep moss that covers them blanched, 

 not black, at the root, is slowly filling and making firm ; 

 whence generally the unsafe ground in the moorland gets 

 known by being mossy instead of heathy ; and is at last 

 called by its riders, briefly, 'the Moss': and as it is 

 mainly at these same mossy places that the riding is diffi- 

 cult, and brings out the gifts of horse and rider, and dis- 

 comfits all followers not similarly gifted, the skilled 

 crosser of them got his name, naturally, of ' moss-rider/ 

 or moss-trooper. In which manner the moss of Norway 

 and Scotland has been a taskmaster and Maker of 

 Soldiers, as yet, the strongest known among natural 

 powers. The lightning may kill a man, or cast down a 

 tower, but these little tender leaves of moss they and 

 their progenitors have trained the Northern Armies. 



14. So much for the human meaning of that decay of 

 the leaves. Now to go back to the little creatures them- 

 selves It seems that the upper part of the moss fibre is 



