IV. THE FLOWEKS. 85 



them to live, the poisonousness of the place is marked by 

 some ghastly colour in air, earth, or flowers. 



There are, of course, exceptions to all such widely found- 

 ed laws ; there are poisonous berries of scarlet, and pesti- 

 lent skies that are fair. But, if we once honestly compare 

 a venomous wood -fungus, rotting into black dissolution of 

 dripped slime at its edges, with a spring gentian ; or a puff 

 adder with a salmon trout, or a fog in Bermondsey with a 

 clear sky at Berne, we shall get hold of the entire question 

 on its right side ; and be able afterwards to study at our 

 leisure, or accept without doubt or trouble, facts of appar- 

 ently contrary meaning. And the practical lesson which I 

 wish to leave with the reader is, that lovely flowers, and 

 green trees growing in the open air, are the proper guides 

 of men to the places which their Maker intended them to 

 inhabit ; while the flowerless and treeless deserts of reed, 

 or sand, or rock, are meant to be either heroically invaded 

 and redeemed, or surrendered to the wild creatures which 

 are appointed for them ; happy and wonderful in their 

 wild abodes. 



Nor is the world so small but that we may yet leave in 

 it also un conquered spaces of beautiful solitude ; where 

 the chamois and red deer may wander fearless, nor any 

 fire of avarice scorch from the Highlands of Alp, or Gram- 

 pian, the rapture of the heath, and the rose. 



