32 PROSERPINA. 



in which Providence has placed them" is to trouble 

 their minds, except so far as they can mend it by 

 seeking light, or shrinking from wind, or grasping 

 at support, within certain limits. In the thoughts 

 of men they have thus become twofold images, — 

 on the one side, of spirits restrained and half 

 destroyed, whence the fables of transformation into 

 trees; on the other, of spirits patient and con- 

 tinuing, having root in themselves and in good 

 ground, capable of all persistent effort and vital 

 stability, both in themselves, and for the human 

 States they form. 



5. In this function of holding fast, roots have a 

 power of grasp quite different from that of branches. 

 It is not a grasp, or clutch by contraction, as that 

 of a bird's claw, or of the small branches we call 

 ' tendrils ' in climbing plants. It is a dead, clumsy, 

 but inevitable grasp, by swelling, after contortion. 

 For there is this main difference between a branch 

 and root, that a branch cannot grow vividly but in 

 certain directions and relations to its neighbour 

 branches ; but a root can grow wherever there is 

 earth, and can turn in any direction to avoid an 

 obstacle.* 



* "Duhamel, botanist of the last century, tells us that, wishing to 

 preserve a field of good land from the roots of an avenue of elms which 

 were exhausting it, he cut a ditch between the field and avenue to 



