VI. THE PARABLE OF JOASH. 121 



its being impertinent — thrusting itself where it has 

 no business, and hinders other people's business — 

 that makes a weed of it. The most accursed of 

 all vegetables, the one that has destroyed for the 

 present even the possibility of European civilization, 

 is only called a weed in the slang of its votaries ; * 

 but in the finest and truest English we call so the 

 plant which has come to us by chance from the 

 same country, the type of mere senseless prolific 

 activity, the American water-plant, choking our 

 streams till the very fish that leap out of them 

 cannot fall back, but die on the clogged surface ; 

 and indeed, for this unrestrainable, unconquerable 

 insolence of uselessness, what name can be enough 

 dishonourable ? 



6. I pass to vegetation of nobler rank. 



You remember, I was obliged in the last chapter to 

 leave my poppy, for the present, without an English 

 specific name, because I don't like Gerarde's ' Corn- 

 rose,' and can't yet think of another. Nevertheless, 

 I would have used Gerarde's name, if the corn-rose 

 were as much a rose as the corn-flag is a flag. But 

 it isn't. The rose and lily have quite different 

 relations to the corn. The lily is grass in loveliness, 



* And I have too harshly called our English vines, ' wicked weeds 

 of Kent,' in Fors Clavigera, xxvii. II. Much may be said for Ale, 

 when we brew it for our people honestly. 



