VI. THE PARABLE OF JO ASH. 113 



this kind, which we are meant to study, the stays of the 

 leaf or stay-bones are finished off very sharply and ex- 

 quisitely at the points ; and indeed so much so, that they 

 prick our fingers when we touch them ; for they are not 

 at all meant to be touched, but admired. 



11. To be admired, with qualification, indeed, always, 

 bat with extreme respect for their endurance and orderli- 

 ness. Among flowers that pass away, and leaves that 

 shake as with ague, or shrink like bad cloth, these, 

 in their sturdy growth and enduring life, we are bound to 

 honour ; and, under the green holly, remember how much 

 softer friendship was failing, and how much of other lov- 

 ing, folly. And yet you are not to confuse the thistle 

 with the cedar that is in Lebanon ; nor to forget if the 

 spinous nature of it become too cruel to provoke and 

 offend the parable of Joash to Amaziah, and its fulfil- 

 ment : " There passed by a wild beast that was in Leba- 

 non, and trode down the thistle." 



12. Then, lastly, if this rudeness and insensitiveness of 

 nature be gifted with no redeeming beauty ; if the boss of 

 the thistle lose its purple, and the star of the Lion's tooth, 

 its light ; and, much more, if service be perverted as 

 beauty is lost, and the honied tube, and medicinal leaf, 

 change into mere swollen emptiness, and salt brown mem- 

 brane, swayed in nerveless languor by the idle sea, at last 

 the separation between the two natures is as great as be- 

 tween the fruitful earth and fruitless ocean ; and between 

 the living hands that tend the Garden of Herbs where 



