THE FURZE IN ITS GLORY 299 



first visit to England, when he was taken to see it at 

 Putney Heath, to fall on his knees and thank God 

 for creating so beautiful a plant. 



I bring in this old story so that the cynical reader 

 may not be cheated of his smile. He it is who 

 said, and I believe he has had even the courage to 

 print it, that there was nothing spontaneous in 

 the act of the great Swedish naturalist, that he had 

 rehearsed it beforehand, and doubtless dropped upon 

 his knees several times in front of a pier-glass in his 

 bedroom that very morning to make himself perfect 

 in the action before being driven to Putney. 



Linnaeus is good enough for me, and for the 

 majority of us I imagine, but what shall we say of the 

 mockers, the spiritual harpies who come unbidden to 

 our sacred feasts to touch and handle everything, and 

 to defile and make hateful whatsoever they touch ? 

 Alas, we cannot escape and cannot silence them, and 

 may only say that we compassionate them ; since, 

 however great they may be in the world, and though 

 intellectually they may be but little lower than the 

 gods, yet do they miss all that is sweetest and most 

 precious in life. And further, we can only hope that 

 when they have finished their little mocking day, that 

 which they now are may be refashioned by wonderful 

 Nature into some better thing a dark, prickly bush, 

 let us say, with blossoms that are frankincense and 

 flame. 



Let this same fragrance sweeten our imaginations ; 

 or, better still, let us forget that such beings exist in 

 the world intellectuals with atrophied hearts and 



