VI. THE PARABLE OF JOASH. 1 23 



been disturbed : fall of Alpine debris, run of railroad 

 embankment, waste of drifted slime by flood, it 

 seeks to heal and redeem ; but it does not offend us 

 in our gardens, nor impoverish us in our fields. 



Nevertheless, mere coarseness of structure, indis- 

 criminate hardihood, is at least a point of some 

 unworthiness in a plant. That it should have no 

 choice of home, no love of native land, is ungentle ; 

 much more if such discrimination as it has, be 

 immodest, and incline it, seemingly, to open and 

 much-traversed places, where it may be continually 

 seen of strangers. The tormentilla gleams in showers 

 along the mountain turf; her delicate crosslets are 

 separate, though constellate, as the rubied daisy. 

 But the king-cup — (blessing be upon it always no 

 less) — crowds itself sometimes into too burnished 

 flame of inevitable gold. I don't know if there 

 was anything in the darkness of this last spring 

 to make it brighter in resistance ; but I never saw 

 any spaces of full warm yellow, in natural colour, 

 so intense as the meadows between Reading and 

 the Thames ; nor did I know perfectly what purple 

 and gold meant, till I saw a field of park land em- 

 broidered a foot deep with king-cup and clover — 

 while I was correcting my last notes on the spring 

 colours of the Royal Academy — at Aylesbury. 



9. And there are two other questions of extreme 



