116 PROSERPINA. 



the oldest straw known ? the oldest linen ? the oldest hemp V 

 We have mummy wheat, cloth of papyrus, which is a kind 

 of straw. The paper reeds by the brooks, the flax-flower in 

 the field, leave such imperishable frame behind them. And 

 Ponte-della-Paglia, in Venice ; and Straw Street, of Paris, re- 

 membered in Heaven, there is no occasion to change their 

 names, as one may have to change ' Waterloo Bridge,' or the 

 'Rue de I'lmperatrice.' Poor Empress! Had she but known 

 that her true dominion was in the straw streets of her fields ; 

 not in the stone streets of her cities ! 



But think how wonderful this imperishableness of the stem 

 of many plants is, even in their annual work : how much more 

 in their perennial work ! The noble stability between death 

 and life, of a piece of perfect wood? It cannot grow, but 

 will not decay ; keeps record of its years of life, but surren- 

 ders them to become a constantly serviceable thing : which 

 may be sailed in, on the sea, built with, on the land, carved 

 by Donatello, painted on by Fra Angelico. And it is not the 

 wood's fault, but the fault of Florence in not taking proper 

 care of it, that the panel of Sandro Botticelli's loveliest pict- 

 ure has cracked, (not with heat, I believe, but blighting frost), 

 a quarter of an inch wide through the Madonna's face. 



But what is this strange state of undecaying wood ? What 

 sort of latent life has it, which it only finally parts with when 

 it rots ? 



Nay, what is the law by which its natural life is measured ? 

 What makes a tree ' old ' ? One sees the Spanish-chestnut 

 trunks among the Apennines growing into caves, instead of 

 logs. Vast hollows, confused among the recessed darknesses 

 of the marble crags, surrounded by mere laths of living stem, 

 each with its coronal of glorious green leaves. Why can't the 

 tree go on, and on, hollowing itself into a Fairy no a 

 Dryad, Ring, till it becomes a perfect Stonehenge of a tree ? 

 Truly " I am not sent to tell thee, for I do not know." 



The worst of it is, however, that I don't know one thing 

 which I ought very thoroughly to have known at least thirty 

 years ago, namely, the true difference in the way of building 

 the trunk in outlaid and inlaid wood. I have an idea that the 



