IX. OUTSIDE AND IN. 165 



linen ? the oldest hemp ? We have mummy wheat, 

 cloth of papyrus, which is a kind of straw. The paper 

 reeds by the brooks, the flax-flower in the field, leave such 

 iuiperishable frame behind them. And Ponte-della-Paglia, 

 in Yenice ; and Straw Street, of Paris, remembered in 

 Heaven, there is no occasion to change their names, as 

 one may have to change ' Waterloo Bridge,' or the ' Rue 

 de 1'Imperatrice.' Poor Empress ! Had she but known 

 that her true dominion was in the straw streets of her 

 fields ; not in the stone streets of her cities ! 



But think how wonderful this imperishableness of the 

 stem of many plants is, even in their annual work : how 

 much more in their perennyil work ! The noble stability 

 between death and life, of a piece of perfect wood ? It 

 cannot grow, but will not decay ; keeps record of its 

 years of life, but surrenders them to become a constantly 

 serviceable thing : which may be sailed in, on the sea, 

 built with, on the land, carved by Donatello, painted on 

 by Fra Angelico. And it is not the wood's fault, but the 

 fault of Florence in not taking proper care of it, that the 

 panel of Sandro Botticelli's loveliest picture has cracked, 

 (not with heat, I believe, but blighting frost), a quarter of 

 an inch wide through the Madonna's face. 



But what is this strange state of undecaying wood? 

 What sort of latent life has it, which it only finally parts 

 with when it rots ? 



Nay, what is the law by which its natural life is meas- 

 ured ? What makes a tree c old ' ? One sees the Spanish- 



