42 PROSERPINA. 



it would, I believe, be nearly the same as that of the veins in 

 the aquatic leaf. I have not examined the fluid law accurately, 

 and I do not suppose there is more real correspondence than 

 may be caused by the leaf's expanding in every permitted di- 

 rection, as the water would, with all the speed it can ; but the 

 resemblance is so close as to enable you to fasten the relation 

 of the unbranched leaves to streams more distinctly in your 

 mind, just as the toss of the palm leaves from their stem 

 may, I think, in their likeness to the springing of a fountain, 

 remind you of their relation to the desert, and their necessity, 

 therein, to life of man and beast. 



24. And thus, associating these grass and lily leaves always 

 with fountains, or with dew, I think we may get a pretty gen- 

 eral name for them also. You know that Cora, our Madonna 

 of the flowers, was lost in Sicilian Fields : you know, also, 

 that the fairest of Greek fountains, lost in Greece, was thought 

 to rise in a Sicilian islet ; and that the real springing of the 

 noble fountain in that rock was one of the causes which deter- 

 mined the position of the greatest Greek city of Sicily. So I 

 think, as we call the fairest branched leaves ' Apolline,' we will 

 call the fairest flowing ones 'Arethusan.' But remember that 

 the Apolline leaf represents only the central type of land leaves, 

 and is, within certain limits, of a fixed form ; while the beau- 

 tiful Arethusan leaves, alike in flowing of their lines, change 

 their forms indefinitely, some shaped like round pools, and 

 some like winding currents, and many like arrows, and many 

 like hearts, and otherwise varied and variable, as leaves ought 

 to be, that rise out of the waters, and float amidst the paus- 

 ing of their foam. 



25. Brantwood, Easter Day, 1875. I don't like to spoil my 

 pretty sentence, above ; but on reading it over, I suspect I 

 wrote it confusing the water-lily leaf, and other floating ones 

 of the same kind, with the Arethusan forms. But the water- 

 lily and water-ranunculus leaves, and such others, are to the 

 orders of earth-loving leaves what ducks and swans are to 

 birds ; (the swan is the water-lily of birds ; ) they are swim- 

 ming leaves ; not properly watery creatures, or abb to live 

 under water like fish, (unless when dormant), but just like 



