crown the boulder with a noble dignity — a land- 

 mark in the country round — as if refledling those 

 elementary forces which conspired to bring about 

 this unusual condition, — the glacier which brought 

 the boulder, the winds which carried the maple 

 seed, the frost which split the rock. 



After their many vicissitudes, the boulders have 

 settled down upon the bosom of the pasture and 

 come to be a fixture in the landscape. This pres- 

 ent age is to them the serene and mellow autumn 

 of their troubled life. Their day is a thousand 

 years. But they are melting into soil — as icicles 

 dissolve in the sun — in that measureless and yet 

 imperceptible thaw which melts granite. The 

 pasture land is perhaps the dust of a still more 

 primitive race whose life has been transmuted into 

 the dandelion and the thistle. 



135 



