232 PROSERPINA. 



twelve lines thoroughly would teach a youth more 

 of true botany than an entire Cyclopaedia of 

 modern nomenclature and description : they are, 

 like all Milton's work, perfect in accuracy of epi- 

 thet, while consummate in concentration. Exquisite 

 in touch, as infinite in breadth, they gather into their 

 unbroken clause of melodious compass the concep- 

 tion at once of the Columbian prairie, the English 

 cornfield, the Syrian vineyard, and the Indian grove. 

 But even Milton has left untold, and for the instant 

 perhaps unthought of, the most solemn difference 

 of rank between the low and lofty trees, not in 

 magnitude only, nor in grace, but in duration. 



8. Yet let us pause before passing to this 

 greater subject, to dwell more closely on what 

 he has told us so clearly, — the difference in Grace, 

 namely, between the trees that rise 'as in dance,' 

 and ' the bush with frizzled hair.' For the bush 

 form is essentially one taken by vegetation in 

 some kind of distress ; scorched by heat, dis- 

 couraged by darkness, or bitten by frost ; it is 

 the form in which isolated knots of earnest plant 

 life stay the flux of fiery sands, bind the rents of 

 tottering crags, purge the stagnant air of cave or 

 chasm, and fringe with sudden hues of unhoped 

 spring the Arctic edge of retreating desolation. 



On the other hand, the trees which, as in sacred 



