g6 PROSERPINA. 



honestly compare a venomous wood-fungus, rotting 

 into black dissolution of dripped slime at its edges,, 

 with a spring gentian ; or a puff adder with a salmon 

 trout, or a fog in Bermondsey with a clear sky at 

 Berne, we shall get hold of the entire question 

 on its right side ; and be able afterwards to study 

 at our leisure, or accept without doubt or trouble, 

 facts of apparently contrary meaning. And the 

 practical lesson which I wish to leave with the 

 reader is, that lovely flowers, and green trees 

 growing in the open air, are the proper guides of 

 men to the places which their Maker intended 

 them to inhabit ; while the flowerless and treeless 

 deserts — of reed, or sand, or rock, — are meant to 

 be either heroically invaded and redeemed, or sur- 

 rendered to the wild creatures which are appointed 

 for them ; happy and wonderful in their wild 

 abodes. 



Nor is the world so small but that we may yet 

 leave in it also unconquered spaces of beautiful 

 solitude ; where the chamois and red deer may 

 wander fearless, — nor any fire of avarice scorch 

 from the Highlands of Alp, or Grampian, the 

 rapture of the heath, and the rose. 



