22 PROSERPINA. 



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 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 moor- 

 lands 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 difficult, 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 



