302 PLANTED OVER THE COUNTY. CHAP. XVIH 



"the fatigue of planting them as widely apart from 

 each other as possible, so that they may scatter their 

 colonies. In long years, after you and I are dead, and 

 perhaps making ' a bung for a beer-barrel,'* they will 

 be fresh and flourishing. ... It was not for vanity that 

 I begged them from you. No. It was the certainty 

 that in generations yet unborn the feeling that ' vanity 

 of vanities, all is vanity,' would weigh down and 

 oppress, and that some wanderer sad might be made 

 happier by seeing them. For is not a ' thing of beauty 

 a joy for ever' ? Bless and thank you, my dear Charlie! 

 They'll never thank you. That's my duty ! One cannot 

 but admire the Wisdom which gave and gives a feeling 

 and a sense of the beautiful even to the ignorant. Were 

 it otherwise, Beauty would not exist; and to the All- 

 knowing how small is the difference between the sage 

 and the savage!" 



A little later Dick says : " I have planted the Eoyal 

 Fern inland many miles. I have planted it at Eeay 

 and Dorery. There I can see the hills of Sutherland 

 far in the distance. Aided by my zealous friend Charles 

 the Sassenach, I have adorned and beautified Caith- 

 ness. I write this in the midst of care and trouble. 

 I have a bad cough, and no more romance at present. 



* " Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, 

 till he find it stopping a bunghole ... Alexander died, Alexander 

 was buried, Alexander returneth unto dust ; the dust is earth ; ol 

 earth we make loam ; and why, of that loam, whereto he was con- 

 verted, might they not stop a Deer-barrel ? 



" Imperious Csesar, dead and aimed to clay, 

 Might st.ip a. hole to keep the wind away." Hamlet. 



