19 



'the Moss': and as it is mainly at these same mossy places 

 that the riding is difficult, and brings out the gifts of horse 

 and rider, and discomfits all followers not similarly gifted, 

 the skilled crosser of them got his name, naturally, of ' moss- 

 rider,' or moss-trooper. In which manner the moss of Nor- 

 way and Scotland has been a taskmaster and Maker of Sol- 

 diers, as yet, the strongest known among natural powers. The 

 lightning may kill a man, or cast down a tower, but these 

 little tender leaves of moss they and their progenitors 

 have trained the Northern Armies. 



14. So much for the human meaning of that decay of the 

 leaves. Now to go back to the little creatures themselves. 

 It seems that the upper part of the moss fibre is especially 

 twdecaying among leaves ; and the lower part, especially de- 

 caying. That, in fact, a plant of moss-fibre is a kind of per- 

 sistent state of what is, in other plants, 'annual. Watch the 

 year's growth of any luxuriant flower. First it comes out of 

 the ground all fresh and bright; then, as the higher leaves 

 and branches shoot up, those first leaves near the ground get 

 brown, sickly, earthy, remain for ever degraded in the dust, 

 and under the dashed slime in rain, staining, and grieving, 

 and loading them with obloquy of envious earth, half-killing 

 them, only life enough left in them to hold on the stem, and 

 to be guardians of the rest of the plant from all they suffer ; 

 while, above them, the happier leaves, for whom they are 

 thus oppressed, bend freely to the sunshine, and drink the 

 rain pure. 



The moss strengthens on a diminished scale, intensifies, 

 and makes perpetual, these two states, bright leaves above 

 that never wither, leaves beneath that exist only to wither. 



15. I have hitherto spoken only of the fading moss as it is 

 needed for change into earth. But I am not sure whether a 

 yet more important office, in its days of age, be not its use as 

 a colour. 



We are all thankful enough as far as we ever are so for 

 green moss, and yellow moss. But we are never enough 

 grateful for black moss. The golden would be nothing with- 

 out it, nor even the grey. 



