88 PROSERPINA. 



of hardly-treated homelif e, or of coarsely-minded and wander- 

 ing prosperity. How literally may we go back from the liv- 

 ing soul symbolized, to the strangely accurate earthly symbol, 

 in the prickly weed. For if, with its bravery of endurance, 

 and carelessness in choice of home, we find also definite 

 faculty and habit of migration, volant mechanism for choice- 

 less journey, not divinely directed in pilgrimage to known 

 shrines ; but carried at the wind's will by a Spirit which 

 listeth not it will go hard but that the plant shall become, 

 if not dreaded, at least despised ; and, in its wandering and 

 reckless splendour, disgrace the garden of the sluggard, and 

 possess the inheritance of the prodigal : until even its own 

 nature seems contrary to good, and the invocation of the just 

 man be made to it as the executor of Judgment, " Let thistles 

 grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley." 



11. Yet to be despised either for men or flowers may be 

 no ill-fortune ; the real ill-fortune is only to be despicable. 

 These faults of human character, wherever found, observe, 

 belong to it as ill-trained incomplete ; confirm themselves 

 only in the vulgar. There is no base pertinacity, no over- 

 weening conceit, in the Black Douglas, or Claverhouse, or 

 Montrose ; in these we find the pure Scottish temper, of 

 heroic endurance and royal pride ; but, when, in the pay, and 

 not deceived, but purchased, idolatry of Mammon, the Scot- 

 tish persistence and pride become knit and vested in the 

 spleuchan, and your stiff Covenanter makes his covenant 

 with Death, and your Old Mortality deciphers only the sense- 

 less legends of the eternal gravestone, you get your weed, 

 earth grown, in bitter verity, and earth-devastating, in bitter 

 strength. 



12. I have told you, elsewhere, we are always first to study 

 national character in the highest and purest examples. But 

 if our knowledge is to be complete, we have to study also the 

 special diseases of national character. And in exact opposi- 

 tion to the most solemn virtue of Scotland, the domestic truth 

 and tenderness breathed in all Scottish song, you have this 

 special disease and mortal cancer, this woody-fibriness, literally, 

 of temper and thought : the consummation of which into pure 



