234 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINN.-EUS 



mosses seated on higher crags expanded themselves and 

 wrote their history in capitals on those giant walls. 

 ' Wit in a poor man's head and moss in a mountain 

 avail nothing,' said the poor curate Nasman. Linnaeus 

 contested this. 



' The stag's-horn club-moss ceased to straggle across 

 the turf and the tufted alpine club-moss takes its place : 

 for they were now in a new world a region whose 

 climate is eternally influenced by some fresh law (after 

 which Clewberg vainly guesses, with a sigh at his own 

 ignorance) which renders life impossible to one species 

 possible to another.' l The scenery and its solitude 

 would have been oppressively magnificent had it not 

 been for the stimulating quality of the air, which raised 

 their energies to meet the demands made upon them. 

 Their minds were set in full tension of receptivity, a 

 new intellectual World seemed to unfold itself before 

 them, wooing them to its conquest. It was like awaken- 

 ing out of a night of ignorance ; and they were at 

 the end of the day's ride, and Faldstedt, who had dis- 

 burdened his pockets of their mineral collection, was 

 already leading off the horses to shelter before they had 

 exhausted their questions to Nature and their leader. 

 Without actually expanding in verse an instrument few 

 of them had cared to practise the grandeur of the land- 

 scape, and the excitement of being the first to examine 

 it, set these ten young fellows all glowing into poetry at 

 once in the joy of discovered relationship with infinity. 

 1 Glancus. 



