VII. THE PARABLE OF JOTHAM. 1 37 



a precision of touch like a Corinthian sculptor's of 

 the acanthus leaf, can be found in anything like the 

 same strength in other races, or if so stubbornly 

 folded and starched moni-plies of irritating kindli- 

 ness, selfish friendliness, lowly conceit, and intolerable 

 fidelity, are native to any other spot of the wild earth 

 of the habitable globe. 



10. Will you note also — for this is of extreme 

 interest — that these essential faults are all mean 

 faults ; — what we may call ground-growing faults ; 

 conditions of semi-education, of hardly-treated home- 

 life, or of coarsely-minded and wandering pros- 

 perity ? How literally may we go back from the 

 living soul symbolized, to the strangely accurate 

 earthly symbol, in the prickly weed. For if, with 

 its bravery of endurance, and carelessness in choice 

 of home, we find also definite faculty and habit 

 of migration, volant mechanism for choiceless journey, 

 not divinely directed in pilgrimage to known shrines ; 

 but carried at the wind's will by a spirit which 

 listeth not, — it will go hard but that the plant shall 

 become, if not dreaded, at least despised ; and, in 

 its wandering and reckless splendour, disgrace the 

 garden of the sluggard, and possess the inheritance 

 of the prodigal : until even its own nature seems 

 contrary to good, and the invocation of the just 

 man be made to it as the executor of Judgment, 



