194 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
feature of the most exquisite beauty in the bleak 
Alpine scenery, gushing up in exposed and rocky 
spots, and gurgling down the sides of the hills 
through beds of the softest and most beautiful 
moss ; not the verdant velvet which covers with a 
short curling nap the ancient rock and the grey 
old tree, but long slender plumes waving under 
the water, and assuming through its mirror a tinge 
of the brightest golden green. In gathering or 
admiring these humble plants in such romantic 
situations, a sense of the beauty of the Greek my- 
thology is awakened in the heart, more vivid and 
real than is experienced in other circumstances. 
It seems easy to believe, in quiet far-off scenes 
where a solitary coot sailing on the water is an in- 
terruption to the solitude, and where the link that 
binds us to the common busy earth is broken and 
dropped, that the dryads are still hiding among 
the trees around, and the nymphs gazing upon 
their own reflected beauty in the limpid stream. 
The filaments of the conferve, lying deeper in the 
fountain than one’s own image, look like the green 
hair of the naiads; and it requires but little exercise 
of the imagination, to fill up the exquisite forms 
with their zones of rainbow drops and robes of 
filmy water-moss, and the beautiful, pure, passion- 
less faces of the invisible bathers to whom the 
flowing, luxuriant tresses belong. 
