III. THE LEAF. 67 



crossing the Maenalian range in spring. And then, 

 lastly, you have the laurel and vine region, full of 

 sweetness and Elysian beauty. 



28. Now as Mercury is the ruling power of the 

 hill enchantment, so Daphne of the leafy peace. She 

 is, in her first life, the daughter of the mountain 

 river, the mist of it filling the valley; the Sun, 

 pursuing, and effacing it, from dell to dell, is, 

 literally, Apollo pursuing Daphne, and adverse to 

 her ; (not, as in the earlier tradition, the Sun pur- 

 suing only his own light). Daphne, thus hunted, 

 cries to her mother, the Earth, which opens, and 

 receives her, causing the laurel to spring up in her 

 stead. That is to say, wherever the rocks protect 

 the mist from the sunbeam, and suffer it to water 

 the earth, there the laurel and other richest vegeta- 

 tion fill the hollows, giving a better glory to the 

 sun itself. For sunshine, on the torrent spray, on 

 the grass of its valley, and entangled among the 

 laurel stems, or glancing from their leaves, became a 

 thousandfold lovelier and more sacred than the same 

 sunbeams, burning on the leafless mountain-side. 



And farther, the leaf, in its connection with the 

 river, is typically expressive, not, as the flower was, 

 of human fading and passing away, but of the per- 

 petual flow and renewal of human mind and thought, 

 rising " like the rivers that run among the hills " ; 



